THE   LIFE 


OF 


THOMAS  HART   BENTON 


BY 


WILLIAM  M.  MEIGS 


AUTHOR    OF    "THE    LIFE   OF   CHARLES    JARED    INGERSOLL,"     "THE   GROWTH 

OF   THE   CONSTITUTION    IN   THE   FEDERAL   CONVENTION 

OF    1787,"    ETC. 


v\  %, 


#&., 


\ 


PHILADELPHIA   AND   LONDON 

J.    B.    LIP  PIN  CO  TT    COMPANY 
"  '  1904 


COPYRIGHT,  1904 
BY  WILLIAM  M.  MEIGS 


Published  December,  1904 


Eleetrotyped  and  Printed  by 
J,  B.  Lippincott  Company,  Philadelphia,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 


A  GOOD  many  years  have  passed  since  I  first  read  Ben- 
ton's  "  Thirty  Years'  View"  and  was  much  struck  in 
particular  with  the  immense  boldness  of  the  course  which 
he  pursued  in  many  instances  in  his  long  career.  Never 
afterwards  ceasing  to  feel  an  interest  in  his  character, 
I  decided  later  to  write  a  biography  of  him  and  began  to 
collect  material  for  the  purpose.  As  some  forty  years 
had,  however,  passed  since  his  death,  it  was  a  difficult 
task  to  find  survivors  having  personal  knowledge  of  him, 
though  on  the  whole  I  have  in  this  search  met  with  more 
success  than  I  anticipated.  He  was  not,  I  think,  much 
given  to  epistolary  correspondence,  and  I  have  not  secured 
any  large  mass  of  his  letters;  but  some  scattering  ones 
here  and  there  have  served  to  throw  more  or  less  light  on 
his  public  and  private  life.  He  was,  however,  a  man  of 
very  strong  convictions,  and  so  addicted  to  "  speaking  out 
in  meeting"  in  a  pungent  way  as  to  be  highly  interesting 
to  many  of  his  contemporaries,  and  there  are  numerous 
stories  of  him  in  print,  telling  of  his  opinions  and  doings. 
These  I  have,  of  course,  used  largely.  To  these  sources 
must  be  added  the  long  record  of  his  speeches  and  actions 
in  the  Senate,  which  I  have  gone  over  with  great  care. 

It  has  long  been  well  known  that  Benton  was  one  of 
the  first  of  our  public  men  of  his  day,  but  I  think  that  a 
consecutive  account  of  his  long  career  will  show  that, , 
despite  his  human  frailties,  he  was  possibly  even  entitled1 
to  higher  rank  as  a  statesman  than  any  one  of  his  three 
greatest  contemporaries  in  the  Senate.    From  a  very  early 
day  he  saw  and  understood  in  the  main  the  immediate 
future  and  the  needs  of  his  countrymen,  and  he  then 
strove  by  simple  laws  to  enable  their  individual  action  to 

3 


:4:»  :.- :  ••>      :..:  :-\  ^k  PREFACE 

work  out  that  destiny  which  few  perceived  so  clearly  as 
he  did.  Beyond  question  a  partisan  at  times  and  blinded 
by  his  feelings,  his  course,  none  the  less,  shows  far  more 
steady  adherence  from  beginning  to  end  to  various  lines 
of  policy  than  does  that  of  any  of  his  great  associates,  and 
at  no  time  is  he  to  be  found  abandoning  his  real  beliefs, 
or  vaporing  to  hide  them  in  a  cloud  of  meaningless  words, 
in  the  frenzied  hope  of  grasping  the  Presidency,  that  will- 
o'-the-wisp  the  pursuit  of  which  has  injured  so  many 
American  careers. 

I  have  received  aid  from  numerous  sources,  many  of 
which  are  indicated  in  the  text ;  but  the  following  should 
be  named  here.  The  New  York  Nation  and  Evening 
Post  long  ago  kindly  inserted  for  me  a  notice  which 
brought  to  light  one  of  the  largest  series  of  Benton's  let 
ters  that  I  have  discovered,  belonging  to  the  very  interest 
ing  period  in  his  life  soon  after  his  removal  to  St.  Louis. 
The  owner  of  these,  Walter  D.  Coles,  Esq.,  of  St.  Louis 
(a  great-grandson  of  Governor  James  P.  Preston,  to 
whom  they  were  addressed),  courteously  sent  them  to 
me,  and  I  have  made  extensive  use  of  them.  My  thanks 
are  due  to  Mrs.  Ben  Cable,  of  Rock  Island,  Illinois,  for 
early  letters  between  Benton  and  his  mother  and  brothers, 
and  to  the  late  Charles  Roberts,  Esq.,  of  Philadelphia,  for 
Benton  letters  in  his  collections.  The  Historical  Society 
of  Pennsylvania  has  some  admirably  arranged  Benton 
letters,  and  the  Missouri  Historical  Society,  in  St.  Louis, 
has  others,  which  were  copied  for  me,  as  were  also  those 
in  the  Jackson  Correspondence  recently  deposited  in  the 
Library  of  Congress  by  members  of  the  Blair  family. 

I  am  greatly  indebted  to  the  late  Honorable  Richard  T. 
Jacob,  of  Louisville,  Kentucky  (a  son-in-law  of  Benton), 
for  some  letters  as  well  as  other  papers,  and  in  particular 
for  a  large  number  of  reminiscences  by  himself  of  his 
father-in-law.  The  late  ex-Senator  Bradbury,  of  Maine, 
was  kind  enough  in  his  last  years  and  at  a  very  advanced 


PREFACE  5 

age  to  send  me  valuable  recollections  of  his  fellow  mem 
ber  in  the  Senate  of  more  than  half  a  century  earlier ;  and 
the  widely  known  James  T.  Yeatman,  Esq.,  of  St.  Louis, 
gave  me  other  interesting  recollections,  while  Colonel 
William  T.  Switzler,  of  Boonville,  Missouri,  sent  me  an 
account  of  Benton's  later  political  struggles  and  numerous 
stories  of  him.  I  am  also  deeply  indebted  to  the  late 
Honorable  Peter  L.  Foy,  of  St.  Louis,  for  much  informar 
tion  as  to  where  to  inquire  and  in  many  other  ways,  as 
well  as  for  giving  me  reminiscences  of  his  own.  The 
late  Honorable  John  M.  Lea,  of  Nashville,  was  extremely 
obliging  and  aided  me  in  researches  in  Tennessee,  as  have 
Colonel  Randal  M.  Ewing,  of  Franklin,  and  Dr.  George 
B.  Hunter,  of  Leiper's  Fork.  In  the  several  libraries  and 
places  that  I  have  visited  during  my  study  of  Benton,  the 
greatest  kindness  has  been  uniformly  shown  me  and  help 
has  been  extended  without  which  much  that  I  have  learned 
would  have  remained  still  buried  in  oblivion. 

The  frontispiece  in  this  work  is  a  reproduction  of  the 
steel  engraving  of  Benton  contained  in  the  "  Thirty  Years' 
View"  and  presumably  the  likeness  which  he  preferred. 
I  have  been  unable  to  trace  the  original,  but  think  it  was 
destroyed  by  fire.  His  portrait  as  a  man  of  early  ma 
turity,  at  page  146,  is  reproduced  from  a  painting  by 
Wilson  Peale,  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society,  and  that 
at  page  508,  showing  him  as  an  old  man,  is  from  another 
portrait  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society.  The  origin 
of  the  illustration  at  page  46,  of  the  early  Benton  house, 
near  Franklin,  Tennessee,  is  sufficiently  indicated  in  the 
text. 

In  order  to  avoid  the  frequent  repetition  of  long  titles 
of  books  as  authorities,  I  have  often  mentioned  merely  the 
name  of  the  author;  a  glance  at  the  list  of  abbreviations 
used  will  at  once  show  precisely  what  book  is  referred  to. 

WILLIAM  M.  MEIGS. 

PHILADELPHIA,  December,  1904. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

Ancestors  in  North  Carolina — Birth  and  Early  Years — Removal 
to  Tennessee  13 

CHAPTER   II 

Settlement  of  the  Region  beyond  the  Mountains — The  Naviga 
tion  of  the  Mississippi  and  Determination  of  the  West  to 
control  it — Its  Absolute  Necessity  to  them — Hostility  of  the 
East  23 

CHAPTER    III 

Influence  upon  Benton  of  his  Early  Life  in  Tennessee — The 
Trials  of  a  Cotton  Planter — Studies  Law — Andrew  Jackson  42 

CHAPTER    IV 

Entrance  upon  Public  Affairs — Services  in  the  State  Legisla 
ture — Aaron  Burr  55 

CHAPTER   V 

Failure  in  Health — Growth  of  Political  Views — Andrew  Jackson 
— War  of  1812 — The  Natchez  Expedition 64 

CHAPTER   VI 

Quarrel  with  Jackson — Deeply  impressed  with  the  Mississippi 
and  the  West — Removal  to  St.  Louis 73 

CHAPTER   VII 

Early  St.  Louis — Edits  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer — Oregon  and  the 
Far  West— The  Road  to  India— The  English  Convention  of 
1818— The  Florida  Treaty— Letters 83 

CHAPTER   VIII 
Duels  with  Charles  Lucas  104 

7 


8  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   IX 

PAGE 

Admission  of  Missouri  as  a  State — Efforts  to  restrict  Slavery — 
Election  to  United  States  Senate — Marriage — Letters 117 

CHAPTER   X 

The  United  States  Senate  in  1821 — Reconciliation  with  Andrew 
Jackson — The  Presidential  Election  of  1824 — Early  Services 
in  the  Senate 133 

CHAPTER    XI 

Long  Struggle  for  the  Repeal  of  the  Salt  Tax— The  Public 
Lands  and  his  Efforts  to  make  their  Acquisition  easy — Pre 
emption,  Graduation,  Homestead,  Cession — Florida  Armed 
Occupation  Law — Distribution  of  the  Surplus  among  the 
States — Politics  of  the  Time — Debate  on  Foot's  Resolution, 
and  Benton's  Share  therein 156 

CHAPTER    XII 

Our  Early  Financial  History — The  United  States  Bank — Gen 
eral  Dislike  and  Distrust  of  throughout  the  West — Origin 
and  Growth  of  this  Feeling — Absurdity  of  View  often  ad 
vanced  as  to  Cause  of  Jackson's  Hostility — The  Western 
Democracy — Early  Moves  against  the  Bank 183 

CHAPTER    XIII 

The  Contest  over  Recharter — Party  Moves — The  Branch  Bank 
Orders— Bill  for  Recharter  Passed  and  Vetoed— The  Elec 
tion  and  Jackson's  Triumph 203 

CHAPTER   XIV 

The  Removal  of  the  Deposits— The  Panic  Session— The  Ex 
punging  Resolution  225 

CHAPTER   XV 

Nullification— The  Tariff— The  Specie  Circular— Executive  Pat 
ronage—The  Banking  and  Currency  Systems— The  Change 
of  Ratio  of  Gold  and  Silver— The  Sub-Treasury—Tyler 
and  the  Whig  Measures  of  1841— The  Panic  of  1837 246 


CONTENTS  9 

CHAPTER    XVI 

PAGE 

Oregon — Discovery  and  Early  History — Facts  as  to  Ownership 
— Efforts  of  Benton  and  Others  in  Congress  to  protect  our 
Interests — The  Treaty  of  1846 — Benton's  Share  in  bringing 
it  about — The  Ashburton  Treaty  of  1842 276 

CHAPTER   XVII 

Southern  View  of  Slavery — Early  Efforts  at  Emancipation — 
Growing  Abolition  Sentiment  in  the  North — The  Personal 
Liberty  Laws,  etc. — Benton's  General  Course — Votes 
against  Calhoun's  Incendiary  Publications  Bill 321 

CHAPTER   XVIII 

Texas — Benton's  Early  Course  in  Regard  to — Opposes  Plan  for 
Immediate  Annexation  in  1842 — Defeat  of  Tyler's  Treaty — 
Encounter  with  McDuffie — His  Plan  for  securing  the  Real 
Texas — Rising  Opposition  to  him  in  Missouri — High  Cour 
age  shown  by  him 339 

CHAPTER   XIX 

The  Final  Admission  of  Texas — Benton  opposed  to  War  with 
Mexico — His  Plan  for  conducting  the  War — The  Lieuten 
ant-General  Bill — Appointed  Major-General,  but  Resigns — 
Santa  Anna's  Agent,  Atocha — The  Wilmot  Proviso — Bitter 
Contests  over  Slavery  in  the  Territories — The  Clayton  Com 
promise — The  Oregon  bill  finally  passed — Benton's  Clashes 
with  Calhoun — Effort  to  Nullify  the  Mexican  Treaty  by  the 
Protocol  358 

CHAPTER   XX 

The  Compromise  Measures  of  1850 — Benton's  Opposition  to  the 

Omnibus  Bill — Encounter  with  Foote 384        f 

CHAPTER   XXI 

Benton's  Last  Session  in  the   Senate— Enormous   Power   long 

wielded  by  him  in  Missouri — The  Jackson-Napton  Resolu-  .^ 

tions — Appeal  Campaign  and  Defeat — His  Bills  for  a  Trans 
continental  Railroad— "  There  is  the  East,  there  is  India" . .  402 


io  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   XXII 

PACK 

Elected  to  the  House  of  Representatives — His  Course  as  a  Mem 
ber — The  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  and  Repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise — Squatter  Sovereignty — Opposes  the  Gadsden 
Purchase — Defeated  for  Re-election 423 

CHAPTER   XXIII 
Character  and  General  Tendencies 435 

CHAPTER   XXIV 

Nominated  for  Governor  of  Missouri — His  Campaign  and  De 
feat — Literary  Work — Sorrows  of  Declining  Years — Mortal 
Disease — Death — Funeral  5°7 


ABBREVIATIONS   USED   IN    REFERRING 
TO   AUTHORITIES 


A.  OF  C.  =  Annals  of  Congress. 

BALLAGH'S   SLAVERY  IN  VIRGINIA  =  A  History  of  Slavery  in  Virginia,  by 

James  Curtis  Ballagh.  Johns  Hop 
kins  University  Studies  in  Historical 
and  Political  Science,  Extra  Volume 
XXIV. 

BAY  =  The  Bench  and  Bar  of  Missouri,  by 

W.  V.  N.  Bay. 

BENTON  STATUE  PROCEEDINGS  =  Proceedings  in  Congress  upon  the  Ac 
ceptance  of  the  Statues  of  Thomas 
H.  Benton  and  Francis  P.  Blair, 
presented  by  the  State  of  Missouri. 
Senate  Document  No.  456,  Fifty- 
sixth  Congress,  First  Session. 

BLAIR,  GEN.  F.  P.,  JR'S.,  ADDRESS  =  Address  of  General  F.  P.  Blair,  Jr., 

on  the  unveiling  of  the  Lafayette 
Park  Monument  to  Thomas  H. 
Benton,  printed  in  the  St.  Louis 
Daily  Democrat  of  May  28,  1868. 

CALHOUN'S  CORRESPONDENCE  =  Correspondence  of  John  C.  Calhoun 

(American  Historical  Society  Pub 
lications),  Edited  by  J.  Franklin 
Jameson. 

CATTERALL'S  SECOND  BANK  =^The    Second    Bank    of    the    United 

States,  by  Ralph  C.  H.  Catterall. 

v  The  Decennial  Publications  of  the 

University  of  Chicago,  Second  Series, 
Volume  II. 

C.  D.  =  Congressional  Debates. 

C.  G.  =  Congressional  Globe. 

CORRESPONDENCE  OF  S.  P.  CHASE  =  Diary  and  Correspondence  of  Salmon 

P.    Chase.     Published    in    Annual 
Report  of  the  American  Historical 
Association  for  1902,  Volume  II. 
II 


12  ABBREVIATIONS 

DARBY  =  Personal   Recollections,  by  John   F. 

Darby. 

DYER  =  Great  Senators  of  the  United   States 

Forty  Years  Ago,  by  Oliver  Dyer. 

FREMONT,  MRS.  =  Biographical  Sketch  of  Senator  Ben- 

ton  in  Connection  with  Western 
Exploration,  by  Jessie  Benton  Fre 
mont,  printed  in  J.  C.  Fremont's 
Memoirs,  i.,  pp.  1-17. 
Souvenirs  of  My  Times,  by  Jessie 
Benton  Fremont. 

GOODRICH  =  Recollections  of  a  Lifetime  ;  or,  Men 

and  Things  I  have  seen,  by  S.  C. 
Goodrich. 

KEYES  =  Fifty  Years'  Observation  of  Men  and 

Events,  by  E.  D.  Keyes. 

VIEW  =  Thirty  Years'  View,  by  a  Senator  of 

Thirty  Years  (Thomas  H.  Benton). 

WENTWORTH  —  John  Wentworth'  s  Congressional  Rem 

iniscences  :  Adams,  Benton,  Cal- 
houn,  Clay,  Webster :  Fergus  Series, 
No.  24. 


THE  LIFE 

OF 

THOMAS   HART  BENTON 

•*- 
CHAPTER    I 

ANCESTORS     IN     NORTH     CAROLINA — BIRTH     AND     EARLY 
YEARS REMOVAL    TO    TENNESSEE 

IN  the  year  1765  William  Tryon  came  out  from  Eng 
land  by  royal  appointment  to  take  up  the  duties  of  gov 
ernor  of  North  Carolina,  bringing  with  him  as  private 
secretary  one  Jesse  Benton.  The  latter  was  born  in  Eng 
land  and  is  said  to  have  been  a  man  of  reserved  and 
scholarly  nature,  and  it  can  hardly  be  venturesome  to 
assume  that  either  ill  health  or  poverty  and  a  poor  outlook 
at  home  were  the  causes  which  led  him  to  leave  his  student 
life  in  the  old  country  and  cast  his  lot  with  the  North 
Carolina  of  that  day.  It  is  likely  that  he  knew  nothing 
in  advance  of  the  people  among  whom  he  was  coming  to 
live,  and  a  man  of  his  tendencies  must  have  found  but 
little  in  common  with  the  turbulent  and  uncultivated  peo 
ple  of  that  colony.  North  Carolina  was  often  called  the 
"  refuge  of  runaways,"  and  is  well  known  to  have  been  to 
a  considerable  extent  settled  by  exiles  from  Virginia  and 
other  colonies.  But  there  was  also  another  and  a  better 
element  in  the  population,  and  Mecklenburg  County  and 
parts  of  the  hill  country  in  general  contained  a  large 
sprinkling  of  a  superior  foreign  element.  In  a  part  of 

13 


14          LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

this  region  Jesse  Benton  spent  at  least  the  latter  years  of 
his  life. 

Tryon  was  the  next  to  last  of  North  Carolina's  royal 
governors,  and  came  out  in  the  year  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
A  man,  apparently,  of  ability,  and  certainly  violent  and 
given  to  "  thorough"  methods,  he  will  always  be  chiefly 
remembered  for  the  destructive  raids  he  carried  out  upon 
defenceless  country  towns  in  Connecticut  some  years  later, 
after  his  transfer  to  New  York.  But  in  North  Carolina 
also  he  left  a  mark.  The  people  of  that  colony  complained 
bitterly  in  his  day  of  the  exaction  of  extortionate  fees 
by  petty  officials,  and  at  length  formed  associations  of 
"  Regulators"  to  protect  themselves.  Violent  methods 
were  resorted  to  by  some  members  of  these  societies,  and 
Tryon  doubtless  saw  in  them  all  mere  hordes  of  "  rioters" 
whose  object  was  to  destroy  property  and  kill  quiet 
people.  Some  of  the  historians  of  North  Carolina,  on 
the  other  hand,  look  upon  them  as  a  band  of  patriots 
whose  noble  resistance  to  tyranny  antedated  that  of  the 
heroes  of  Lexington.  Whatever  may  be  the  exact  truth 
as  to  this,  Tryon  soon  called  the  militia  together,  marched 
against  the  Regulators,  and  with  great  activity  and  vigor 
completely  overthrew  them  at  the  battle  of  Alamance  on 
May  1 6,  1771. 

This  very  complete  victory — now  almost  vanished 
from  memory  in  American  history — was  followed  by 
the  usual  crop  of  hangings,  flights,  and  then  of  indem 
nity  graciously  granted  to  those  who  took  the  iron-clad 
oath  required  of  them.  What  part  Jesse  Benton  took 
in  all  these  proceedings  is  nowhere  stated,  but  if  he 
was  still  private  secretary  he  can  certainly  not  have 
opposed  the  governor,  and  his  sympathies  would  natu 
rally  have  been  against  the  colonists.  Neither  is  there 
any  actual  record  left  of  the  course  he  took  in  public 
affairs  after  Tryon  went  to  New  York  in  1771,  nor 
during  the  scenes  of  the  Revolutionary  drama.  It 


BIRTH    AND    PARENTAGE  15 

seems  clear,  however,  that  he  must  have  supported  the 
colonists  during  the  actual  war,  or  we  should  not  find 
him  a  member  of  the  General  Assembly  from  Orange 
County  in  1781.  Still,  all  his  ties  were  originally  with 
the  royalists,  and  his  English  origin  and  associations 
would  naturally  have  tended  to  lead  him  away  from  the 
popular  side.  He  had,  moreover,  married  into  a  family 
which  had  been  but  a  short  time  in  this  country.  His 
wife  was  Anne  Gooch,  the  only  child  of  a  younger  brother 
of  Sir  William  Gooch,  a  Scotchman  who  had  been  the 
royal  governor  of  Virginia  from  1727  to  1749.  The  spani 
of  a  single  life  often  covers  stupendous  changes  in  human 
affairs,  but  Mrs.  Jesse  Benton  lived  to  see  such  a  growth 
of  history  as  may  well  have  made  her  mind  reel.  Born 
in  colonial  days  and  under  the  rule  of  governors  appointed 
by  a  power  far  away  across  the  seas,  we  shall  find  her 
living  many,  many  years  later  upon  the  wrest  bank  of  the^ 
Mississippi  River  in  the  home  of  her  son,  a  distinguished, 
member  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  from  thej. 
State  of  Missouri.  In  her  earlier  days  three  great  Euro 
pean  powers  had  contended  at  various  times  for  the  con 
trol  of  the  vast  Indian  wilderness  lying  to  the  west  of  her 
home,  and  she  saw  all  of  these  disappear  before  the  steady 
push  of  her  countrymen,  while  her  residence  in  old  age 
was  under  the  undisputed  protection  of  a  national  prodigy 
undreamed  of  in  her  childhood  and  upon  the  far  side  of 
a  river  the  very  navigation  of  which  had  been  shut  for 
many  years  to  the  sturdy  young  people  destined  to  con 
trol  it. 

The  parents  of  Anne  Gooch  had  died  when  she  was 
a  child,  and  she  wras  in  consequence  brought  up  *  in  the 
family  of  Col.  Thomas  Hart,  whose  niece  she  was  and 
whose  name  she  gave  later  to  her  eldest  son.  A  daughter 


*  Letter  to  the  author  from  Miss  Lucretia  Hart  Clay,  of  Lex 
ington,  Kentucky,  a  great-granddaughter  of  Col.  Thomas  Hart. 


16         LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

of  Col.  Hart  married  Henry  Clay,  and  the  relationship 
thus  existing  between  the  Bentons  and  Mrs.  Clay  was  the 
origin  of  the  oft-repeated  error  that  Benton  and  Clay  were 
cousins. 

In  a  sketch  *  which  affords  almost  the  only  informa 
tion  as  to  the  earlier  years  of  the  Bentons  in  this  country, 
Mrs.  Fremont,  a  daughter  of  the  subject  of  this  biogra 
phy,  writes  that  Jesse  Benton  was  quite  out  of  his  element 
in  a  new  country.  Reserved,  intensely  English,  and  of 
a  scholarly  turn  of  mind,  his  natural  preference  was  for 
settled  usages  and  a  life  confined  to  his  family  and  his 
cherished  library.  In  this  were  to  be  found  fine  editions 
of  the  great  English  classics,  as  well  as  various  books  in 
Greek,  Latin,  French,  and  Spanish,  with  all  of  which  lan 
guages  he  was  familiar.  But  his  life  of  contemplation 
and  of  literary  ease  was  rudely  ended  by  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution,  and  he  soon  found  himself  poor  and  with 
a  large  family.  The  same  authority  writes  that  this 
pressing  need  induced  him  to  turn  westward,  and  that  he 
led  the  first  surveying  party  into  Kentucky,  and  it  may  be 
safely  assumed  that  he  was  the  "  Benton"  whose  name 
appears  f  in  1775  or  1776  among  the  immigrants  to  join 
-Boone's  new  settlement  of  Boonesborough.  But  he  did 
hot  settle  in  the  then  West,  but  lived  at  least  his  latter 
years  in  the  hill-country  of  North  Carolina,  near  Hills- 
boro,  Orange  County.  Here  his  eldest  son,  the  subject 


*  Printed  in  J.  C.  Fremont's  Memoirs,  i.,  pp.  1-17.  I  have  fol 
lowed  Mrs.  Fremont  as  to  the  early  Bentons  in  America,  though  it  is 
curious  that  Benton  himself  on  one  occasion  speaks  distinctly  of  his 
paternal  grandfather  in  this  country  (View,  i.,  p.  77),  and  seems  to 
do  the  same  thing  on  other  occasions  (Ibid.,  pp.  57,  98,  118).  I 
think  I  can  see  in  a  number  of  instances  that,  though  Benton 
had  a  wonderful  memory,  he  was  by  no  means  always  accurate 
as  to  matters  which  probably  did  not  seem  to  him  important  or 
of  general  interest. 

t  R.  G.  Thwaites's  Daniel  Boone,  p.  127, 


BIRTH    AND    PARENTAGE  17 

of  this  Life,  was  born  on  the  I4th  of  March,  1782,  and 
here  were  doubtless  also  born  the  seven  other  children. 
They  came  into  the  world  very  close  to  each  other,  and 
at  the  time  of  the  father's  death — when  the  eldest  son  was" 
but  eight  years  old — six  or  seven  younger  children  were 
living.  It  seems  that  the  father  had  in  him  the  seeds 
of  pulmonary  consumption,  and  this  dread  disease  had 
already  begun  to  assert  its  power  at  the  time  of  his  sur 
veying  experience.  He  persevered,  however,  long  enough 
to  secure  large  landed  property,  but  died  soon  after  his^ 
return  to  North  Carolina.  He  was  a  lawyer  by  profes 
sion,  apparently  of  some  fame,  and  had  business  relations 
with  his  wife's  former  guardian,  Colonel  Hart.  It  is 
worthy  to  be  recorded  that  he  was  a  friend  of  the  great 
pioneer,  Daniel  Boone,  and,  curiously  enough,  Andrew 
Jackson  was  the  recipient  of  hospitality  in  his  house.*1 
In  his  last  illness,  foreseeing  no  doubt  the  anxious  and 
wearing  years  that  lay  before  his  widow,  with  grinding 
poverty  ahead  and  a  large  family  to  care  for,  poor  Ben- 
ton  asked  a  devoted  friend  to  look  after  her  and  them. 
This  gentleman  was  a  chaplain  who  had  also  come  out 
with  Governor  Tryon,  a  man  of  high  character  and  of 
the  same  cultivated  mind  as  Jesse  Benton.  They  had 
each  found  in  the  other  a  congenial  friend  in  the  world 
of  angry  agitation  and  of  war  in  which  fate  had  cast 
their  lots,  and  Benton  turned  to  him  in  his  last  hours  to 
ask  a  service  which  the  chaplain  on  his  part  is  said  to  have 
faithfully  rendered. 

A  painful  tale  is  told  by  Mrs.  Fremont  from  her 
father's  own  lips  of  an  experience  he  had  at  about  this 
time  when  a  boy  of  but  eight  years.  It  seems  that  his 
mother  had  some  severe  illness  after  the  death  of  her 
husband,  and  Thomas  did  not  see  her  for  a  long  time. 
At  length  he  was  taken  into  her  presence,  but  in  place 

*View,  i.,  pp.  736,  737. 

2 


i8         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

of  the  young  mother  he  had  known,  "  with  light  brown 
hair  crowning  her  stately  head  and  health  and  animation 
lighting  her  blue  eyes,"  he  found  a  thin,  white-faced,  and 
white-haired  woman,  who  took  his  hand  and  put  it  in 
that  of  a  baby-girl,  telling  him  that  he  was  now  the 
head  of  the  family,  the  eldest  son,  and  must  be  her  help 
in  taking  care  of  the  others.  A  deep  impression  was 
evidently  made  upon  him  by  this  scene,  from  which,  he 
told  his  daughter,  he  ran  out  into  the  grove,  and  there, 
"  with  cries  and  lamentations,  made  war  on  myself,  until 
I  could  accept  that  ghost  in  place  of  my  own  mother." 
There  the  chaplain  found  him,  and  doubtless  gave  the 
boy  such  consolation  as  the  circumstances  permitted. 
This  friend  of  the  father  became  the  tutor  of  the  Ben- 
ton  children  for  some  years  and  gave  instruction  in  Latin 
and  Greek  to  at  least  the  eldest  son.  It  seems  that  the 
lessons  in  Greek  were  begun  one  Sunday  on  the  way 
home  from  chapel.  The  chaplain  had  with  him  on  this 
occasion  a  Greek  testament,  and  read  verses  from  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  to  the  boy,  giving  him  the  mean 
ing  and  making  him  repeat  correctly.  But  the  chief 
element  in  the  home  education  of  Benton  was  the  influ 
ence  and  character  of  his  mother.  In  his  brief  auto 
biography  *  he  begins  with  a  tribute  to  her  and  says  he 

*  I  was  unable  for  a  long  time  to  discover  this  autobiographical 
sketch,  which  I  found  quoted  as  being  in  the  Thirty  Years'  View. 
It  was  not  contained  in  my  copy,  nor  in  some  others  I  looked  at, 
and  was  apparently  not  in  the  copy  in  the  Library  of  Congress ;  but 
at  length  I  discovered  it  in  one  of  the  copies  in  the  Historical 
Society  of  Pennsylvania.  It  is  not  paged  regularly  and  follows 
immediately  after  the  Table  of  Contents.  A  note  at  the  head  says 
that  it  was  prepared  by  its  author  "  while  he  was  suffering  excru 
ciating  pain  from  the  disease  that,  a  few  weeks  later,  closed  his 
earthly  career."  It  was  therefore  evidently  written  after  the  book 
was  copyrighted  and  many  copies  issued,  and  was  doubtless  merely 
bound  up  with  some  of  the  copies  issued  about  the  time  of  Benton's 
death  and  later. 


BIRTH    AND    PARENTAGE  19 

thinks  that  all  the  children  received  from  her  the  impress 
of  future  character.  She  was,  he  writes,  "  a  woman  of 
reading  and  observation — solid  reading  and  observation 
of  the  men  of  the  Revolution  brought  together  by  the 
course  of  hospitality  of  that  time,  in  which  the  houses  of 
friends  and  not  taverns  were  the  universal  stopping- 
places.  .  .  .  She  was  also  a  pious  and  religious  woman, 
cultivating  the  moral  and  religious  education  of  her 
children  and  connected  all  her  life  with  the  Christian 
Church,  first  as  a  member  of  the  English  Episcopalian; 
and,  when  removal  to  the  great  West — then  in  the  wil 
derness — had  broken  that  connection,  then  in  the  Metho 
dist-Episcopalian,  in  which  she  died.  All  the  minor 
virtues,  as  well  as  the  greater,  were  cherished  by  her, 
and  her  house,  the  resort  of  the  eminent  men  of 
time,  was  the  abode  of  temperance,  modesty,  and  deco 
rum.  A  pack  of  cards  was  never  seen  in  her  house." 
Mrs.  Fremont  thinks  that  it  was  the  mother  who  im 
planted  in  him  his  great  industry  and  his  truth,  courage, 
and  justice. 

But  few  of  Benton's  very  early  recollections  are  pre- 
served,  but  he  stated  *  once  that  he  remembered  to  have 
seen  as  a  mere  child  revolutionary  soldiers  coming  to  his 
father's  house  to  ask  legal  advice  whether  there  was  not 
some  way  by  which  they  could  recover  their  rights  to 
bounty  lands  after  they  had  been  induced  to  part  with 
their  certificates  for  a  mere  song.  A  deep  impression  was 
made  upon  the  boy  by  the  hopeless  cases  of  these  unfortu 
nates,  so  that  he  hated  to  the  end  to  see  the  mere  word 
assigns  contained  in  any  such  law. 

Benton  wrote  in  his  autobiographical  sketch  that  he 
had  but  an  imperfect  education :  he  went  first  to  a 
grammar  school  kept  by  a  young  New  England  emi 
grant,  named  Richard  Stanford,  who  was  subsequently 

*C  G.,  33d  Cong.,  2cl  Sess.,  p.  998. 


20         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

for  many  years  a  member  of  Congress,  and  he  was  also 
for  a  time  a  matriculate  of  the  University  of  North 
Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill.  This  was  in  the  year  1799, 
and  it  may  be  added  that  he  was  during  his  short  col 
lege  life  a  member  of  "  The  Philanthropic  Society."  But 
he  was  only  at  the  university  one  year  at  most,  and  then 
probably  left  so  as  to  accompany  his  mother  and  family 
in  their  long  migration  to  the  portion  of  Middle  Ten 
nessee  known  at  that  time  as  "  the  Cumberland  settle 
ment."  It  has  been  seen  that  Jesse  Ben  ton  had  before 
his  death  secured  a  large  tract  of  land — which,  the  son 
writes,  contained  forty  thousand  acres — in  the  then  far 
western  country,  and  it  was  to  this  that  Mrs.  Benton 
moved  with  her  family,  probably  in  the  year  1799.  It 
was  situated  near  the  town  of  Franklin  and  not  very  far 
from  Nashville. 

This  was  a  severe  journey  to  be  made  by  a  widow 
with  a  large  family  of  children.  The  distance  from  her 
home  near  Hillsboro  must  have  been  from  five  hundred  to 
six  hundred  miles,  and  the  roads  were  rough  and  hilly 
and  had  only  very  recently  been  rendered  at  all  safe  from 
Indians.  Indeed,  as  late  as  1794-96  all  of  Tennessee  was 
alarmed  over  an  Indian  uprising,  and  Knoxville  and 
Nashville  were  both  threatened.  But  a  few  years  had 
passed  since  it  was  the  custom  for  the  territorial  authori 
ties  to  provide  annually  for  the  escort  of  immigrants  to 
the  Cumberland  settlements ;  and  Mrs.  Benton,  if  she  did 
not  go  under  protection  of  this  kind,  doubtless  at  least 
went  in  company  with  numbers  of  other  immigrants  who 
were,  like  herself,  seeking  to  better  their  prospects  in  life 
by  settling  in  the  country  beyond  the  mountains.  I  sup 
pose  her  journey  must  have  been  through  the  North  Caro 
lina  mountains  by  way  of  the  Watauga  River  and  then 
down  the  valley  of  the  Holston  to  Fort  Campbell,  near 
where  the  Holston  and  the  Clinch  Rivers  unite  to  form 
the  Tennessee ;  and  that  she  then  struck  northwestwardly 


BIRTH    AND    PARENTAGE  21 

over  the  mountains  to  the  valley  of  the  Cumberland,  and 
so  on  to  Nashville. 

Much  of  the  journey  lay  through  an  almost  primeval 
forest  where  settlers  were  but  scattering  and  where  a 
very  few  years  before  nature  and  the  Indian  had  reigned 
supreme.  Francis  Baily,  then  an  unknown  young  Eng 
lishman,  but  later  an  astronomer  of  fame,  traversed  part 
of  the  same  country  from  Nashville  to  the  East  in 
August,  1797,  and  has  recorded  *  some  of  his  experi 
ences.  He  was  on  horseback  and  a  good  deal  of  the  time 
alone,  and  it  took  him  nine  days  to  travel  from  Nashville 
to  the  neighborhood  of  Fort  Campbell.  He  speaks  of 
the  road  as  being  extremely  rough  and  in  places  even 
difficult  to  find,  and  refers  more  than  once  to  the  gloomy 
and  majestic  scenery  of  the  immense  stretch  of  forest, 
and  the  overpowering  sense  of  solitude  it  produced. 

One  evening  as  he  wandered  about  his  camp  admir 
ing  the  beauty  of  the  place,  embosomed  in  the  woods 
and  mountains,  he  writes  that  he  became  impressed  with 
so  profound  a  sense  of  his  insignificance  among  the 
superb  works  of  the  divine  Creator  around  him  that  his 
mind  ran  into  a  train  of  thought  somewhat  similar,  he 
thinks,  to  w7hat  Addison  must  have  felt  when  waiting 
certain  numbers  of  the  Spectator. 

Baily  passed  some  of  his  nights  at  the  houses  of  set 
tlers  which  he  chanced  to  reach  at  a  suitable  hour,  but  often 
slept  in  the  open.  On  his  first  experience  of  this  sort, 
he  tells  in  some  detail  how,  finding  towards  evening  that 
he  could  not  reach  any  settlement,  he  stopped  at  an  early 
hour  near  a  creek,  built  a  fire,  and  made  his  coffee  in  a 
tin  cup  and  then  took  a  hearty  meal  from  his  plain  fare. 
Soon  after,  spreading  his  blankets  out,  he  lay  down, 
wondering  whether  the  feeling  of  being  all  alone  in  the 

*  Journal  of  a  Tour  in  Unsettled  Parts  of  the  United  States  of 
North  America  in  1796  and  1797.  By  the  late  Francis  Baily,  etc. 


22         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

immense  forest  for  the  first  night  in  his  life  would  fill  his 
mind  with  dismal  and  melancholy  apprehensions,  but 
slept  soundly  until  the  morning  without  once  awaking. 

On  another  occasion,  after  a  hot  and  tiresome  day, 
night  overtook  him  near  the  brow  of  a  mountain  and 
there  was  every  promise  of  a  violent  thunderstorm,  so 
that  he  would  gladly  have  stopped  but  for  the  pains  of 
great  thirst,  which  impelled  him  to  keep  on  in  the  dark 
with  the  hope  of  reaching  a  creek.  But  he  found  none, 
and  by  ten  o'clock  the  thunder  and  lightning  were  very 
severe  and  he  feared  he  should  not  be  able  to  kindle  a 
fire,  so  he  stopped  where  he  was,  gathered  a  mass  of 
wrood  and  made  a  big  fire,  and  then  lay  down  in  his 
blanket.  But  soon  the  rain  began  to  fall  in  torrents, 
and  put  his  fire  out,  and  he  fell  fast  asleep  in  the  battle 
of  the  elements  with  his  head  on  a  log  for  a  pillow. 
Waking  up,  however,  during  the  night,  he  found  his 
blankets  drenched  and  himself  nearly  covered  with  water, 
for,  with  an  ignorance  no  backwoodsman  would  have 
been  guilty  of,  he  had  lain  down  in  a  hollow  which  the 
storm  had  changed  into  a  rivulet.  Wringing  his  blankets 
out  he  tried  it  again  on  a  higher  spot  of  ground  and  slept 
soundly  till  morning,  when  he  awoke  to  find  a  brilliant 
sky  and  the  sun  rising  in  majesty. 

On  still  another  evening,  when  rain  threatened,  our 
traveller  passed  the  night  with  some  companions  whom  he 
chanced  to  meet,  and  the  party  put  up  "  a  curious  kind 
of  Indian  tent  out  of  the  bark  of  some  trees  which  we 
saw  scattered  about,"  in  which  they  passed  the  night 
comfortably.  He  found  many  of  the  families  so  poorly 
supplied  with  provisions  that  they  could  not  let  him 
have  any.  All  the  houses  were  of  course  but  one  story 
high,  and  the  flooring — if  any — was  made  of  very  rough 
boards  laid  directly  upon  the  ground  or  in  some  instances 
on  joists. 


CHAPTER    II 

SETTLEMENT     OF      THE     REGION      BEYOND      THE      MOUN 
TAINS THE    NAVIGATION    OF    THE    MISSISSIPPI    AND 

DETERMINATION    OF    THE    WEST   TO    CONTROL   IT ITS 

ABSOLUTE    NECESSITY    TO   THEM HOSTILITY    OF   THE 

EAST 

THE  growth  of  the  British  settlements  in  the  middle 
and  southern  parts  of  North  America  was  for  many 
years  entirely  confined  to  the  region  lying  between  the 
Atlantic  coast  and  the  great  chain  of  mountains  inland. 
First  planting  their  homes  near  the  coast  or  on  the 
navigable  rivers  leading  to  it,  the  colonists  gradually 
spread  westward  over  the  flat  or  rolling  country,  but 
it  was  long  before  they  invaded  the  hills  of  the  great 
Appalachian  chain. 

Indeed,  this  region  was  so  different  in  character,  so 
rough,  so  completely  separated  from  civilization,  that  it 
was  in  the  end  settled  by  quite  a  different  race  of  people. 
The  boldest  and  most  hardy  of  men  were  here  essential, 
for  the  labor  before  them  involved  all  the  usual  trials  of 
pioneer  work  of  the  roughest  kind,  and  they  had  more 
over  to  conquer  the  territory  inch  by  inch  from  the  most 
dangerous  savage  foe  *  that  civilized  man  has  had  to 
meet. 

The  people  for  this  work  was  found  in  the  main  in 
the  descendants  in  this  country  of  the  Scotch-Irish  immi 
grants,  mingled  of  course  with  the  roving  characters  and 
adventure-loving  spirits  of  many  other  races.  They 
constituted  the  "  backwoodsmen"  of  the  time  and  were 

*Mr.  Roosevelt  (Winning  of  the  West,  i.,  p.  17)  emphasizes 
this  point.  I  am  very  much  indebted  to  this  admirable  work  for  my 
account  of  the  Southwestern  people. 

23 


24         LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

the  first  to  settle  on  the  slopes  of  the  Alleghany  Moun 
tains  and  in  the  valleys  which  lie  on  the  Eastern  edge  of 
the  chain.  As  they  gradually  poured  over  the  tops  of 
the  ranges  they  first  came  to  in  their  westward  progress, 
and  reached  the  valleys  lying  between  the  hills,  towering 
mountains  rendered  further  progress  to  the  westward 
well-nigh  impossible,  but  smiling  valleys  stretched  out  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach  to  the  southward  and  seemed 
to  invite  them  to  press  on  in  that  direction. 

When  they  or  their  fathers  had  left  the  civilized 
regions  near  the  coast,  they  had  gone  westward  and 
established  a  primitive  civilization  of  their  own  in  the 
back  regions  of  the  colonies,  but  now,  as  their  population 
grew  by  natural  increase  and  by  new  migrations,  they 
changed  the  course  of  their  march  and  swept  along  the 
edges  of  the  hills  and  down  the  valleys  towards  the 
south.  And  in  the  course  of  years  their  civilization  came 
to  cover  the  whole  of  the  hill-region  lying  along  the 
eastern  slope  of  the  mountains  between  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Carolinas.  Detesting  the  Quakers  of  Penn 
sylvania  and  forever  fighting  with  them,  they  had  little 
in  common  with  the  inhabitants  of  any  of  the  colonies 
they  lived  in,  but  formed  one  homogeneous  people  among 
themselves  over  all  the  long  extent  of  territory  they 
covered. 

But  even  this  hardy  race  of  pioneers  was  for  many 
years  halted  by  the  higher  ranges  of  mountains,  and 
down  to  near  the  time  of  the  Revolution  had  not  pene 
trated  into  the  country  beyond  the  Alleghenies.  The 
pathless  stretches  of  rocky  hills,  covered  over  with  rough 
forests,  forced  them  to  change  the  direction  of  their 
progress. 

Even  long-settled  communities  in  Europe,  with  the 
means  of  transportation  then  known  to  the  world,  found 
mountain-ranges  a  tremendous  barrier  to  communica 
tion,  and  in  America  the  consequence  of  the  Alleghenies 


THE   PEOPLE   BEYOND   THE   MOUNTAINS     25 

was  that  the  country  to  the  west  of  them  was  more  easily 
reached  by  the  French  from  far-off  Canada  than  it  was 
from  the  vastly  nearer  British  settlements.  And  the 
mountains  came  to  be  a  sort  of  natural  boundary  between 
the  English  and  the  French,  not  admitted,  but  in  fact  the 
limit  of  their  respective  operations. 

This  great  line  of  natural  division  is  essential  to  be 
borne  in  mind  by  those  seeking  to  understand  the  feeling 
and  tendencies  of  the  early  settlers  of  what  was  then 
known  as  "  the  West."  No  one  can  othenvise  have  any 
comprehension  of  the  early  history  of  Tennessee  or  Ken 
tucky. 

During  the  Revolution  and  for  some  few  years 
previous,  important  movements  had  occurred  in  the 
settlement  of  this  section.  The  great  pioneer  Boone  had 
penetrated  beyond  the  mountains  to  become  fascinated 
with  the  blue-grass  region  of  Kentucky,  and  a  settlement 
had  been  made,  mainly  by  emigrants  from  Virginia,  on 
the  Watauga  River  in  what  is  now  Northeastern  Ten 
nessee. 

Here  came  John  Sevier  and  James  Robertson,  the 
latter  soon  to  be  the  founder  of  Nashboro  on  the  Cum 
berland,  and  the  former  the  greatest  of  all  Indian  fighters 
and  the  most  popular  man  of  the  whole  Southwest. 
Sevier  moved  later  to  the  settlements  on  the  Nolichucky 
River,  and  "  Nolichucky  Jack"  was  for  many  years  the 
hero  whom  every  backwoodsman  worshipped,  and  the 
universal  reliance  in  cases  of  Indian  uprisings.  And 
during  the  Revolution  the  inhabitants  of  the  coast  owed 
a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  to  him  and  all  the  settlers  in  this 
outlying  region,  who  have  been  well  called  "  The  Rear 
Guard  of  the  Revolution."  Not  only  did  they  protect 
the  more  eastern  regions  from  the  horrors  of  Indian 
attack,  but  in  one  instance  they  crossed  the  mountains  to 
the  east  by  such  rapid  movements  as  they  alone  were  able 
to  make,  and  at  the  battle  of  King's  Mountain  com- 


26          LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

pletely  overwhelmed  and  destroyed  the  British  Colonel 
Ferguson  and  his  command. 

This  was  an  event  having  a  most  important  influence 
on  far  greater  military  movements  to  the  eastward, 
while  the  victories  of  General  George  Rogers  Clark  in 
the  then  far  West  and  Northwest  were  no  less  vital  in 
determining  the  control  of  the  continent. 

In  1782,  when  the  Revolution  was  practically  ended 
and  when  Benton  was  born  into  the  world,  "  the  people 
beyond  the  mountains"  had  come  to  be  of  some  degree 
of  importance.  Settled,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  main 
by  the  Scotch-Irish  of  the  back  country,  the  immigrant 
streams  of  this  race  which  had  occupied  the  particular 
region  we  are  concerned  with  had  come  chiefly  from 
Virginia;  and  both  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  had  all 
their  affections  and  interests  bound  up  with  the  Southern 
States.  To  them  they  were  near,  side  by  side  with  them 
they  had  battled  against  the  English  and  the  red  man  of 
the  woods,  and  it  was  plain  that  in  the  future  their 
natural  political  alliance  would  be  with  the  South.  Penn 
sylvania,  their  original  home,  was  very  far  off,  and  the 
East  was  farther  yet  and  had  had  no  share  whatsoever 
in  their  development.  The  South  looked  upon  the  new 
settlements  as  a  part  of  themselves,  bound  to  increase 
their  power  and  influence  in  the  future,  while  the  East 
looked  upon  them  as  far-off  strangers,  quite  lacking  in 
civilization,  and  destined  inevitably  to  lessen  its  relative 
importance  in  the  Confederation  or  any  union  that  might 
follow  upon  it. 

The  East  and  the  South  then  and  for  many  years 
looked  upon  each  other  with  suspicion  and  distrust,  both 
seeking  to  control  the  Union  and  at  the  same  time  fearing 
that  the  other  section  would  gain  the  upper  hand;  and 
their  rivalry  upon  this  point  would  furnish  the  true  key  to 
many  a  problem  for  which  historians  assign  other  causes. 

The  vast  settlement  of  the  region  northwest  of  the 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     27 

Ohio,  which  was  destined  entirely  to  overturn  the  calcula 
tions  of  that  time  upon  this  subject  and  to  increase  so 
enormously  the  power  of  the  North  in  the  Union,  had, 
not  then  begun  or  was  barely  in  embryo,  and  all  the  men 
of  that  day  and  for  some  years  afterwards  looked  upon 
the  settlement  of  "  the  West"  as  bound  to  increase  the 
political  power  of  the  South.  Instances  of  this  belief 
can  be  found  in  the  contests  over  representation  in  the 
Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  and  all  the  political 
thought  of  the  day  assumed  it  as  a  fact.  But  it  was 
not  many  years  before  "  the  West''  of  a  fewr  years  earlier 
was  known  as  "  the  Southwest,"  and  the  old  term  had 
come  to  indicate  par  excellence  the  rapidly  growing 
region  northwest  of  the  Ohio  River. 

In  these  facts  is  to  be  found  the  reason  why  the 
Southern  statesmen  were  generally  friendly  to  the  new 
settlements,  while  the  Easterners  ignored  them  or  were 
actively  hostile.  It  was  not  because  the  Southerners  of 
that  day  were  more  far-seeing  than  the  New  Englanders, 
— though  such  was  undoubtedly  the  fact, — but  because 
the  former  knew  that  these  settlements  were  of  necessity 
friends  of  theirs,  while  the  latter  knew  that  every  settler 
in  the  Southwestern  region  tended  to  the  diminution  of 
the  East's  power  in  the  country.  The  matter  had  there 
fore  a  most  vital  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  future 
control  of  the  Union. 

It  is  very  important  to  realize  that  there  was  a  world 
of  meaning  in  the  language  of  the  day,  which  described 
the  new  settlements  as  "  over  the  mountains" — or  be 
yond  them.  They  were  not  so  far  off  in  distance  from 
the  settled  regions  nearer  the  sea-coast,  but  were  in  effect 
completely  isolated  from  them  by  nature,  and  their  only 
practicable  outlet  lay  in  quite  a  different  direction. 

Between  them  and  the  harbors  of  the  Atlantic  coast 
towered  great  ranges  of  mountains  which  rendered 
transportation  in  that  direction  almost  impossible,  wrhile 


28         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

magnificent  rivers  flowed  by  their  doors,  the  waters  of 
all  of  which  poured  onward,  growing  steadily  by  acces 
sions,  until  they  reached  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  by  the 
majestic  Father  of  Waters.  It  is  true  that  some  little 
traffic  was  carried  on  the  backs  of  pack-horses  over  the 
mountains  and  thence  to  the  coastwise  regions,  but  com 
merce  in  the  great  sense  was  impossible  in  this  way. 
Railroads  were  then  hardly  dreamed  of,  and  without  them 
centuries  of  time  could  not  have  afforded  the  people  a 
market  for  their  produce  by  any  route  to  the  eastward. 
Washington,  Jefferson,  and  others  had  plans  of  opening 
communication  over  the  watershed  separating  the  head 
waters  of  some  more  northern  streams,  but  to  the  people 
of  Tennessee  and  Kentucky  no  such  line  of  communication 
offered. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  many  rapidly  flowing  rivers 
seemed  as  if  created  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  a  vast 
commerce  on  their  bosoms  to  the  sea.  In  his  earlier  days, 
at  Madrid,  Jay  had  well  expressed  the  feelings  of  the 
people  upon  this  subject,  when  he  told  Gardoqui  that 
"  the  Americans,  almost  to  a  man,  believed  that  God 
Almighty  had  made  that  river  [the  Mississippi]  a  high 
way  for  the  people  of  the  upper  country  to  go  to  the  sea 
by  ...  and  that  the  inhabitants  would  not  be  readily 
convinced  of  the  justice  of  being  obliged  either  to  live 
without  foreign  commodities  or  lose  the  surplus  of  their 
productions,  or  be  obliged  to  transport  both  over  rugged 
mountains  and  through  an  immense  wilderness  to  and 
from  the  sea,  when  they  daily  saw  a  fine  river  flowing 
before  their  doors  and  offering  to  save  them  all  that 
trouble  and  expense." 

This  undoubtedly  represented  the  feelings  of  the 
Americans  in  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  and  it  furnishes 
the  key-note  to  all  the  political  movements  of  the  time — 
to  the  wranglings  and  bickerings  with  the  ruling  powers 
of  the  Confederation  and  of  the  Union,  as  well  as  to  the 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     29 

risky  dallyings  with  the  Spaniards  at  New  Orleans.  The 
future  was  sealed  to  them,  they  did  not  and  could  not 
foresee  the  immense  empire  that  was  to  grow  up  under 
the  aegis  of  the  Federal  Union,  and  the  central  power  of 
the  country  was  almost  an  unknown  quantity. 

Not  only  did  it  not  protect  them  in  the  assertion  of 
their  right  to  navigate  the  Mississippi,  but  they  well 
knew  that  many  leading  men  of  the  country  and  nearly 
the  unanimous  voice  of  a  powerful  section  cared  nothing 
for  that  claim  of  right  unless  as  a  means  of  securing 
commercial  treaties  of  benefit  to  themselves.  To  them, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  navigation  of  that  river  was  the 
essential  point,  with  which  in  their  magnificent  country 
they  could  hope  for  a  grand  development,  without  which 
they  must  inevitably  become  stunted  and  dwarfed  from 
lack  of  access  to  the  markets  of  the  world. 

No  wonder  that  the  mere  sentimental  attachment  to 
the  weak  central  power  at  Philadelphia  gave  way  at  times 
before  this  overwhelming  necessity,  and  that  numbers  of 
leading  men  in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  had  more  or 
less  communication  with  the  Spaniards  with  the  view 
of  ascertaining  what  rights  could  be  secured  from  them, 
if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst. 

The  Westerners  and  the  Americans  generally  had, 
moreover,  a  strong  claim  in  law  to  the  right  to  navigate 
the  Mississippi.  Had  they  remained  subjects  of  Great 
Britain,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  their  claim  could  have  been 
contested,  and  by  the  results  of  the  Revolution  they  had 
succeeded  in  general  to  the  rights  of  Great  Britain  upon 
the  continent.  The  Treaty  of  Paris  of  1763,  by  which 
the  war  between  England  and  her  colonies  on  one  side 
and  France  and  Spain  on  the  other  was  ended,  trans 
ferred  Canada  and  other  regions  of  this  country  to  Great 
Britain,  and  by  its  seventh  article  France  admitted  Eng 
land's  title  to  the  middle  of  the  Mississippi  River  and 
ceded  to  her  everything  on  the  left  bank  of  that  river 


y 


30         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

except  the  town  of  New  Orleans  and  the  island  on  which 
it  was  situated.  The  article  then  went  on  immediately  as 
follows : 

"  it  being  well  understood  that  the  navigation  of  the  river  Missis 
sippi  shall  be  equally  free,  as  well  to  the  subjects  of  Great  Britain 
as  to  those  of  France,  in  its  whole  length  and  breadth  from  its 
source  to  the  sea ;  and  expressly  that  part  which  is  between  the 
said  island  of  New  Orleans,  and  the  right  bank  of  that  river,  as 
well  as  the  passage  both  in  and  out  of  its  mouth.  It  is  further 
stipulated  that  the  vessels  belonging  to  the  subjects  of  either  nation 
shall  not  be  stopped,  visited,  or  subjected  to  the  payment  of  any 
duty  whatever." 


Nor  was  this  all,  for  the  right  could  also  be  main 
tained  with  some  strength  under  the  general  principles 
of  international  law.  It  is  true  that,  like  all  such  ques 
tions,  this  one  was  very  doubtful,  and  instances  such  as 
those  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Scheldt  could  be  cited,  where 
the  dwellers  on  the  upper  banks  of  a  river  only  succeeded 
by  public  treaty  in  acquiring  the  right  to  navigate  it  to 
its  mouth  through  alien  territory ;  but  the  right  to  do  so 
was  asserted  as  a  right  in  Europe,  and  in  this  country 
the  nature  of  the  circumstances  and  the  thin  settlement 
of  the  region  to  be  traversed  made  the  claim  stronger. 

The  people  of  that  day  were  enormously  influenced 
by  the  philosophy  which  preceded  the  French  Revolu 
tion,  and  the  Americans  felt  that  in  "  natural  justice" 
their  claim  was  of  overwhelming  strength.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Spanish  negotiators  had  a  strong  point  in  the 
instance  of  the  Tagus  River,  which  they  said  their  people 
would  be  much  pleased  to  navigate  through  Portugal, 
but  the  Portuguese  rejected  the  claim. 

Our  countrymen  of  the  then  West  discussed  these 
questions,  but  there  was  a  breezy  independence  of  prece 
dent  in  them  and  they  were  very  willing  in  case  of  need 
to  put  themselves  in  the  position  of  pioneers  in  inter- 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     31 

national  law,  as  they  had  been  in  the  wilderness  of  nature. 
K  international  law  was  against  them  on  this  point,  they 
were  undoubtedly  willing  and  intended  to  change  the 
rules  of  that  vague  science.  The  prime  point  to  them  was 
that  the  navigation  was  an  essential,  and  they  meant  to 
take  it  by  force  some  day,  if  they  could  not  get  it  other 
wise.  They  knew  well  that  not  many  years  would  elapse, 
before  any  effort  of  the  puny  Spanish  settlements  on  the 
lower  river  to  resist  them  would  be  utterly  futile,  and 
they  thirsted  for  the  time  to  come  when  they  could  leap 
at  their  prey.  In  some  of  the  instances  where  their  claim 
was  denied  and  their  countrymen  roughly  handled  by  the 
arrogant  dons,  one  can  see  in  their  furious  outbursts  of 
passion  how  they  hankered  to  be  up  and  at  their  enemy. 

An  echo  of  their  feeling  is  to  be  found  in  a  speech  * 
of  Benton's  in  1835  m  which  he  said  that,  if  we  had  not 
obtained  Louisiana  by  money,  "  we  should  soon  have 
possessed  it  by  blood.  The  young  West,  like  a  lion, 
would  have  sprung  upon  the  delta  of  the  Mississippi, 
and  we  should  have  had  an  earlier  edition  of  the  battle 
of  New  Orleans." 

During  the  Revolution,  moreover,  the  colonists  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  exercising  the  right  of  navigating 
the  Mississippi,  for  Spain  was  then  very  willing  to  fur 
nish  supplies  to  aid  them  in  their  revolt  against  Great 
Britain.  The  settlers  in  the  region  we  are  concerned 
with  had  therefore  known  no  time  at  which  they  could 
not  trade  on  that  river,  and  had  come  almost  to  think  it 
a  part  of  themselves. 

Any  proposal  to  part  with  it  must  have  seemed  to 
them  much  like  a  suggestion  to  cut  off  an  arm  or  leg,  and 
they  would  have  entirely  endorsed  the  homely  language 
of  Franklin,  who  wrote  f  in  1780  that  nothing  would  in- 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xi.,  part  i,  1834-35,  col.  155. 

t  Quoted  in  Justin  Winsor's  Westward  Movement,  p.  183. 


32         LIFE   OF    THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

duce  him  to  sell  a  drop  of  its  waters :  "  a  neighbor,"  he 
added,  "  might  as  well  ask  me  to  sell  my  street  door." 
But  when  the  war  was  nearing  its  end  and  Spain  awoke 
to  the  consciousness  that  her  participation  in  the  Revolu 
tion  had  not  only  contributed  to  humble  England  but 
had  aided  in  the  founding  of  communities  which  were 
soon  to  be  vastly  dangerous  to  her  own  settlements,  she 
wanted  to  curb  the  sturdy  growth  of  these  thorns  in  her- 
sides,  and  she  refused  point-blank  to  permit  any  Ameri 
can  to  float  his  goods  down  the  great  Father  of  Waters. 

Jay's  efforts  at  Madrid  in  1780  to  overcome  this 
determination  were  unavailing,  and  for  the  better  part 
of  a  generation  the  new  settlements  found  themselves 
denied  that  which  they  believed  to  be  their  right  and  knew 
to  be  an  absolute  essential.  During  this  term  navigation 
to  the  sea  was  permitted  to  some  few,  happily  very  few, 
Americans  who  had  sold  their  honor  to  acquire  the  right, 
but  to  all  others  it  was  almost  entirely  denied  and  was 
always  attended  with  grave  risk  of  capricious  seizures 
and  imprisonment. 

Nor  was  this  refusal  of  the  Spaniards  by  any  means 
the  worst  feature  of  the  matter  to  the  pioneers  on  our 
then  Southwestern  border.  Far  worse,  their  own  coun 
trymen  seemed  quite  willing  to  abandon  the  assertion  of 
their  rights  and  to  leave  them  alone  in  a  condition  of 
isolation.  The  very  authorities  at  the  seat  of  govern 
ment,  whose  clear  duty  it  was  to  consider  the  whole 
country,  were  so  ignorant  or  oblivious  of  the  absolutely 
essential  interests  of  the  new  Southwest  that  a  majority 
of  the  States  was  ready  to  use  these  interests  as  an  ele 
ment  of  barter  in  obtaining  a  treaty  for  the  benefit  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  seaboard  region. 

In  1785  Spain's  minister  Gardoqui  arrived  in  this 
country,  and  soon  he  and  Jay  were  again  engaged  in  an 
effort  to  negotiate  a  treaty  between  the  two  countries. 
The  Spaniards  were  willing  to  enter  into  a  commercial 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     33 

treaty  of  some  value  to  parts  of  this  country,  but  Jay 
found  their  representative  absolutely  inflexible  on  the 
question  of  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  which,  - 
Spain  insisted,  must  be  given  up.  At  length,  Jay  was 
led  to  yield  the  sound  views  which  he  had  formerly 
maintained  under  the  instructions  of  his  government, 
and  he  seems  to  have  become  convinced  of  the  truth  of 
the  view  Gardoqui  had  urged  *  upon  him  in  Spain  some 
years  before,  that  the  present  generation  of  Americans 
would  not  need  the  river. 

Doubtless  he  had  no  conception  of  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  Western  region  was  even  then  filling  up  and  of 
the  vastly  greater  rush  of  immigration  that  was  only 
awaiting  the  opening  of  the  Mississippi  River  in  order 
to  go  there;  and  of  course  also  the  benefits  of  the  com 
mercial  treaty  were  very  real  to  him  with  his  associations 
on  the  seaboard,  while  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
River  was  far  off  and  was  only  of  benefit  to  some  people 
whom  he  probably  looked  upon  as  half  civilized.  But 
his  instructions  forbade  him  to  yield  the  navigation  of 
the  river,  so  on  September  3.  1786,  he  went  before  Con 
gress  in  secret  session,  reported  the  state  of  his  negotia 
tions,  and  dwelt  upon  the  importance  of  securing  a 
commercial  treaty. 

We  could  not  then  make  war,  he  said,  and  he  did 
not  think  the  navigation  for  twenty-five  years  would  be 
of  any  importance,  so  he  suggested  that  we  agree  "  to 
forbear  to  use"  the  navigation  of  the  river  below  our 
territories  for  twenty-five  years.  And  for  this  proposal 
the  seven  Northern  States  voted  solidly,  while  the  six 
Southern  ones  were  all  upon  the  other  side. 

It  required  nine  votes  under  the  Confederation  to 
ratify  a  treaty,  but  Jay  considered  this  vote  as  authoriz 
ing  him  to  negotiate  with  Gardoqui  upon  this  new  basis, 

*  Winsor's  Westward  Movement,  p.   183. 
3 


34          LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

while  the  minority  maintained  that  he  had  no  such  right 
except  upon  the  affirmative  vote  of  nine  States.  In 
pursuance  of  his  belief,  Jay  again  opened  negotiations 
with  Gardoqui  in  the  spring  of  1787,  but  found  him  still 
inexorable:  the  forbearance  to  use  was  no  inducement 
and  he  insisted  that  the  claim  of  right  should  be  re 
nounced. 

The  proposed  commercial  treaty  failed  therefore  to 
reach  even  the  stage  of  a  draft,  and  it  was  not  long  before 
the  secret  proceedings  became  known.  The  excitement 
throughout  the  West  was  intense,  and  the  people  felt 
that  they  were  abandoned  by  those  who  should  have 
guarded  their  rights  and  that  they  must  in  self-defence 
take  whatever  measures  were  necessary  for  protection 
against  a  great  wrong. 

Inflammatory  addresses  were  circulated,  threatening 
union  with  other  countries,  and  emissaries  both  from 
Spain  and  Great  Britain  had  little  difficulty  in  finding 
ears  quite  open  to  proposals  for  some  sort  of  union  with 
them.  Miro  on  behalf  of  Spain  suggested  concessions 
as  to  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  and  even  offered 
to  admit  their  products  free  of  duty,  and  some  traffic  to 
New  Orleans  grew  up. 

Jay's  awful  slip  is  one  more  instance  of  the  blind 
ness  of  man  to  whatever  is  not  directly  before  his  eyes. 
To  the  Westerner  the  proposition  itself — let  alone  the 
exaggerated  and  garbled  accounts  of  it,  which  were  of 
course  current — meant  that  he  should  agree  to  be  stifled 
in  his  isolation  for  a  term  of  years  which  seems  to  youth 
a  lifetime  and  to  middle  life  means  old  age  or  the  grave. 
Can  any  man  wonder  that  some  of  their  leaders  entered 
into  communication  with  the  agents  of  other  countries, 
so  that,  if  such  a  vile  project  were  consummated,  they 
could  in  one  way  or  another  secure  for  themselves  and 
their  people  some  means  for  a  tolerable  existence  during 
their  few  short  years  of  human  life?  The  blindness  of 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     35 

Jay  in  this  instance  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  five  years 
after  his  proposal  in  Congress  settlers  were  pouring  into 
the  new  region  in  ever  increasing  throngs,  and  within 
ten  years  Tennessee  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a 
State  with  a  population  of  76,000,  while  as  early  as  1795* 
Spain  had  agreed  to  a  treaty  giving  the  Americans  all 
they  asked  for  in  regard  to  the  navigation  of  the  Mis 
sissippi. 

\Yashington's  view  was  vastly  wiser.  He  could  fore 
see  the  future  and  wait  for  it,  and  he  wrote  that  "  when 
ever  the  new  States  become  so  populous  and  so  extended 
to  the  westward,  as  to  really  need  it,  there  will  be  no 
power  which  can  deprive  them  of  the  use  of  the 
Mississippi,"  *  and  that  in  the  meantime  it  would  be  best 
not  to  urge  the  subject. 

With  the  formation  of  the  present  Union  in  1789, 
the  United  States  became  far  more  capable  in  case  of 
need  to  deal  vigorously  with  home  questions,  and  had 
given  moreover  to  the  wrorld  an  object-lesson  of  their 
capabilities  which  soon  won  for  us  greater  respect  abroad. 
But,  even  more  important  than  this,  settlers  had  been 
pouring  over  the  mountains  and  down  the  troughs  of  the 
valleys  in  such  throngs  into  the  Southwest,  that  there 
was  soon  there  a  population  which  the  Spaniards  saw 
would  inevitably  in  the  course  of  a  few7  years  inflict  an 
ignominious  wound  upon  their  pride  and  seize  by  force 
those  rights  long  vainly  contended  for. 

Accordingly,  when  Thomas  Pinckney  entered  into 
negotiations  in  Spain  in  1795,  he  found  a  very  different 
state  of  affairs  from  that  bald  refusal  to  consider  the 
American  contention  which  had  led  Jay  to  commit  his 
stupendous  blunder.  At  first  Pinckney  met  with  some 


*  Quoted  from  Thomas  Marshall  Green's  Spanish  Conspiracy, 
p.  31.  See  generally  The  Opening  of  the  Mississippi,  by  Frederick 
Austin  Ogg,  chap.  ix. 


36         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

difficulties,  but  he  soon  decided  to  stand  Spanish  delays 
no  longer,  and  demanded  his  passports,  and  it  was  not 
then  long  before  he  secured  everything  he  had  come  for. 
On  October  27,  1795,  he  and  the  Spanish  authorities 
signed  the  treaty  of  San  Lorenzo,  by  which  Spain  con 
ceded  the  right  of  the  Americans  to  navigate  the  Mis 
sissippi  from  its  source  to  the  sea,  admitted  them  for  three 
years  to  a  right  of  deposit  for  their  goods  in  transitu  at 
the  city  of  New  Orleans  without  any  charge  other  than 
a  reasonable  one  for  storage  and  incidental  expenses,  and 
agreed  that,  if  Spain  should  decide  not  to  extend  this 
term  of  three  years,  she  should  name  some  other  point 
on  the  island  of  New  Orleans  as  a  place  of  deposit  for 
the  American  trade.* 

As  has  been  pointed  out  by  a  recent  writer,  this  vastly 
important  treaty  and  its  negotiator  have  by  no  means 
received  the  fame  in  our  history  which  they  merit.  The 
work  of  Pinckney  ended  at  once  the  international  trou 
bles  of  the  then  Western  border.  From  that  date  on,  the 
Southwest  could  dispose  of  its  produce,  its  great  future 
was  assured,  and  it  filled  up  with  population  with  the 
utmost  rapidity.  Only  once  again  did  any  similar  danger 
confront  it,  and  that  was  when  there  was  a  possibility  of 
collision  with  the  vast  power  of  France  under  Bonaparte. 

In  the  autumn  of  1800,  by  the  secret  treaty  of  St. 
Ildephonso,  Spain  agreed  in  certain  events  to  retrocede 
Louisiana  to  France,  and,  though  the  secret  was  carefully 
guarded,  yet  whisperings  of  it  leaked  out  slowly,  and 
under  the  instructions  of  President  Jefferson  our  minister 
to  France  was  the  next  year  actively  engaged  in  seeking 
to  find  out  the  truth.  As  is  well  known,  these  inquiries 
ended  in  the  purchase  by  Jefferson  of  the  whole  of  the 
immense  territory  of  Louisiana — an  event  of  such  far- 

*  Roosevelt's  Winning  of  the  West,  iv.,  p.  207 ;  C.  C.  Pinck- 
ney's  Thomas  Pinckney,  p.  131, 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     37 

reaching  consequences  in  every  way  that  the  human  mind 
can  hardly  grasp  it.  The  West  was  then  absolutely 
secure  to  us  for  all  time,  and  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi 
and  the  immense  region  tributary  to  its  waters  was  re 
served  for  American  civilization. 

But  during  the  very  last  hours  there  was  once  more 
serious  trouble.  The  Spaniards  were  still  in  possession 
at  New  Orleans  in  1802,  for  the  secret  treaty  had  not 
been  carried  into  execution,  and  they  seem  to  have  been 
appalled  at  the  inpouring  of  our  people.  A  grant  of  land 
made  to  an  American  was  consequently  annulled  and 
further  grants  forbidden,  and  then  on  October  n,  1802, 
the  Intendant  Morales  issued  a  proclamation  by  which 
he  suspended  the  American  right  of  deposit  at  New 
Orleans.  In  so  doing  he  nearly  produced  a  famine  in 
that  city,  so  dependent  had  it  come  to  be  upon  our  trade, 
and  he  set  the  whole  West  in  a  fury  of  indignation. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  in  detail  into  the  many 
appeals  from  western  bodies  at  this  time,  but  Marbois  * 
has  well  summed  up  as  follows  the  burden  of  the  argu 
ments  of  the  Westerners  upon  the  subject : 

"  The  Mississippi,"  they  said,  "  is  ours  by  the  law  of  nature ; 
it  belongs  to  us  by  our  numbers,  and  by  the  labor  which  we  have 
bestowed  on  those  spots,  which,  before  our  arrival,  were  desert 
and  barren.  Our  innumerable  rivers  swell  it,  and  flow  with  it  into 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Its  mouth  is  the  only  issue  which  nature  has 
given  to  our  waters,  and  we  wish  to  use  it  for  our  vessels.  No 
power  in  the  world  shall  deprive  us  of  this  right.  We  do  not  pre 
vent  the  Spaniards  and  French  from  ascending  the  river  to  our 
towns  and  villages.  We  wish  in  our  turn  to  descend  it  without 
any  interruption  to  its  mouth,  to  ascend  it  again,  and  exercise  our 
privilege  of  trading  on  it  and  navigating  it  at  our  pleasure.  If  our 
most  entire  liberty  in  this  matter  is  disputed,  nothing  shall  prevent 
our  taking  possession  of  the  capital,  and  when  we  are  once  masters 
of  it,  we  shall  know  how  to  maintain  ourselves  there.  If  Congress 

*  Barbe  Marbois's  History  of  Louisiana,  translated  from  the 
French.  Philadelphia,  1830,  pp.  215-16. 


38         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

refuses  us  effectual  protection,  if  it  forsakes  us,  we  will  adopt  the 
measures  which  our  safety  requires,  even  if  they  endanger  the  peace 
of  the  Union  and  our  connection  with  the  other  States.  No  pro 
tection,  no  allegiance." 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  this  fairly  represented  the 
feeling  of  the  West  upon  the  subject,  nor  that  the  people 
of  that  region  could  easily  have  carried  into  execution 
the  threat  of  forcible  seizure  as  against  any  enemy  they 
were  likely  to  meet  there.  Bonaparte  could  not  afford  to 
maintain  in  this  country  the  necessary  force,  and  Spain 
and  its  feeble  possessions  about  New  Orleans  were  alto 
gether  incapable  of  offering  any  effective  resistance  to 
the  thousands  of  hardy  riflemen  the  West  could  have 
sent  against  them.  In  a  very  few  months,  however,  all 
thought  of  seizing  New  Orleans  by  force  and  all  threats 
against  the  Union  for  not  maintaining  their  right  to 
navigate  the  Mississippi  were  replaced  by  a  blaze  of 
peaceful  triumph,  as  the  first  book  in  the  history  of  the 
great  West  was  ended  for  all  time  by  the  purchase  of 
Louisiana. 

I  have  considered  it  necessary  to  go  into  these  mat 
ters  of  general  history  at  some  length  for  more  than 
one  reason.  In  the  first  place,  the  romance  of  the  early 
settlement  and  growth  of  the  Southwest  has  been  abso 
lutely  forgotten  and  swallowed  up  in  the  more  recent  like 
events  on  the  far  Western  plains.  These  latter  have 
taken  place  almost  entirely  at  the  hands  of  northern 
enterprise  and  largely  controlled  by  settlers  from  New 
England,  and,  as  the  North  and  especially  New  England 
have  been  the  writers  of  our  history,  they  have  naturally 
neglected  a  chapter  which  belongs  to  the  South.  But 
the  growth  of  the  Southwest  has  at  least  an  equal  interest, 
and  the  settlers  of  that  region  had  difficulties  and  hard 
ships  to  encounter  which  the  later  settlers  of  the  far  West 
were  to  a  great  extent  relieved  of.  Mr.  Roosevelt  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  north  of  the  Ohio  the  settle- 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     39 

ments  grew  up  behind  the  shelter  of  the  United  States 
army  and  that  the  region  was  to  a  large  extent  controlled 
by  the  federal  authorities;  but  in  the  Southwest  no  such 
aid  whatever  w7as  afforded,  and  the  hardy  pioneers  had 
themselves  to  form  and  lead  their  own  armies,  to  win 
their  own  fights,  and  then  by  their  unaided  efforts  to 
hold  the  land  against  some  of  the  strongest  and  most 
numerous  Indian  tribes  found  upon  the  continent. 

But  more  important  to  us  than  this  is  the  fact  that 
even  the  earliest  part  of  the  history  of  the  Southwest 
has  the  strongest  bearing  on  the  character  of  the  people 
Benton  lived  with  in  his  youth,  and  the  later  portions 
of  it  upon  his  own  individual  opinions.  During  his  boy 
hood  and  until  he  was  about  seventeen,  he  lived  in  one 
of  the  old  Southern  States,  and  he  then  went  across  the 
mountains  and  settled  in  Tennessee.  Here,  still  a  very 
young  man  for  some  years,  he  of  course  imbibed  the 
opinions  of  his  neighbors,  who  undoubtedly  all  felt — and 
rightly — that  the  South  was  their  friend  and  the  sup 
porter  of  their  interests,  while  the  far-off  East  cared 
nothing  for  them  and  would  even  have  been  glad  to  cast 
them  off.  The  conduct  of  the  latter  section  during  the 
earlier  contests  over  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
made  a  deep  impression  on  the  people  of  the  Southwest, 
and  its  effects  on  Benton  can  be  clearly  seen  in  speeches 
he  made  more  than  thirty  years  later.  Indeed,  it  was 
not  until  the  lapse  of  half  a  century,  and  under  circum 
stances  and  a  political  contest  which  produced  an  entirely 
different  alignment,  that  he  at  length  broke  awray  from 
the  associations  of  his  earlier  years  and  is  to  be  found 
acting  in  the  main  with  the  section  which  he  had  undoubt 
edly  distrusted  and  disliked. 

He  had  felt  in  his  own  person  in  youth  the  disastrous 
effects  upon  his  portion  of  our  common  country  of  the 
policy  which  New  England  was  then  only  too  willing 
to  adopt.  He  had  in  1802  seen  ruin  staring  him  and  all 


40         LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

the  people  of  the  Southwest  in  the  face,  when  the  naviga 
tion  of  the  Mississippi  was  for  a  time  shut  to  them,  and 
soon  after  this  he  heard  from  the  distance  the  ravings 
of  the  New  Englanders  over  the  purchase  of  Louisiana 
and  their  passionate  threats  to  destroy  the  Union. 

"  If  this  bill  passes,"  said  Josiah  Quincy,*  in  speaking  of  the  bill 
for  the  admission  of  the  Territory  of  Orleans  as  a  State,  "  it  is  my 
deliberate  opinion  that  it  is  virtually  a  dissolution  of  this  Union; 
that  it  will  free  the  States  from  their  moral  obligation,  and,  as  it 
will  be  the  right  of  all,  so  it  will  be  the  duty  of  some,  definitely  to 
prepare  for  a  separation,  amicably  if  they  can,  violently  if  they 
must  .  .  . 

" '  What  shall  we  do,'  says  the  gentleman  from  Tennessee 
(Rhea),  '  if  we  do  not  admit  the  people  of  Louisiana  into  the  Union? 
— our  children  are  settling  that  country.'  Sir,  it  is  no  concern  of 
mine  what  he  does.  Because  his  children  have  run  wild  and  un 
covered  into  the  woods,  is  that  a  reason  for  him  to  break  into  my 
house,  or  the  house  of  my  friends,  to  filch  our  children's  clothes,  in 
order  to  cover  his  children's  nakedness?  This  Constitution  never 
was,  and  never  can  be,  strained  to  lap  over  the  wilderness  of  the 
West.  ...  It  was  never  constructed  to  form  a  covering  for  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Missouri  and  the  Red  River  country.  .  .  .  You 
have  no  authority  to  throw  the  rights  and  liberties  and  property  of 
this  people  into  a  'hotch-pot'  with  the  wild  men  on  the  Missouri, 
nor  with  the  mixed,  though  more  respectable,  race  of  Anglo-Hispano- 
Gallo  Americans,  who  bask  on  the  sands  in  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi.  .  .  .  Do  you  suppose  the  people  of  the  Northern  and 
Atlantic  States  will,  or  ought  to,  look  on  with  patience  and  see 
Representatives  and  Senators  from  the  Red  River  and  Missouri 
pouring  themselves  on  this  and  the  other  floor,  managing  the  con 
cerns  of  a  seaboard  fifteen  hundred  miles  at  least  from  their  resi 
dence,  and  having  a  preponderancy  in  councils,  into  which  consti 
tutionally  they  could  never  have  been  admitted?" 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  these  views  fairly  repre 
sented  the  wishes  of  New  England  at  that  day,  and  what 
a  profound  impression  they  must  have  made  on  Benton ! 
On  this  and  other  occasions  he  saw  the  people  of  that 

*  A.  of  C,  nth  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  1810-11,  pp.  525-40. 


THE    PEOPLE    BEYOND    THE    MOUNTAINS     41 

section  put  themselves  on  record  as  bitter  opponents  of  a 
policy  vital  to  the  future  of  the  region  where  he  lived, 
and  which  secured  it  at  once  from  all  foreign  trouble  and 
offered  it  a  great  future,  and  all  this  was  of  course  greatly 
emphasized  by  their  conduct  during  the  War  of  1812. 
It  must  have  been  a  terrible  struggle  to  overcome  these 
memories,  and  the  iron-strong  mind  of  Benton  only  did 
so  when  he  felt  that  the  Union  was  at  stake.  It  is  indeed 
a  curious  instance  of  the  changes  of  human  affairs  that 
as  an  old  man  he  had  to  seek  safety  for  the  Union  by 
uniting  with  that  section  which  in  his  early  years  he  had 
rightly  looked  upon  as  having  been  more  than  once  ready 
to  break  it  to  pieces. 

With  the  history  of  Tennessee  in  particular  we  need 
not  trouble  ourselves  much  here.  It  is  only  the  general 
history  of  the  section  that  has  any  bearing  on  the  growth 
of  Benton's  opinions.  Always  neglected  by  the  parent 
State  of  North  Carolina,  the  region  was  ceded  by  her  to 
the  General  Government  in  1 784,  and  the  inhabitants  then 
formed  the  State  of  Franklin,  and  elected  Sevier  gover 
nor.  But  this  did  not  meet  the  wishes  of  the  rulers  of 
North  Carolina,  so  they  recalled  their  cession,  and  the 
State  of  Franklin  soon  came  to  an  ignominious  end.  In 
1790,  one  year  after  the  formation  of  the  present  union, 
North  Carolina  once  more  ceded  the  region  to  the  Gen 
eral  Government,  and  it  was  erected  into  the  "  Territory 
Southwest  of  the  River  Ohio;"  and  in  1796  it  was  admit 
ted  into  the  Union  as  a  State. 


CHAPTER     III 

INFLUENCE     UPON      BENTON     OF     HIS     EARLY     LIFE     IN 

TENNESSEE THE    TRIALS    OF    A    COTTON    PLANTER 

STUDIES   LAW ANDREW    JACKSON 

IT  was  among  the  people  of  this  new  region  that 
Benton  passed  his  youth  and  early  manhood,  in  the 
midst  of  a  democracy  probably  as  thorough  as  the  world 
had  ever  seen.  There  were  of  course  distinctions  of 
people,  and  there  were  leaders  who  were  much  looked 
up  to,  but  hereditary  claims  hardly  existed,  and  any  cap 
able  and  energetic  man  could  easily  have  his  merits  rec 
ognized.  Their  democracy,  moreover,  accorded  more 
influence  by  far  to  the  poorer  and  plainer  classes  than 
was  then  usual  even  in  America,  and  this  characteristic 
was  destined,  before  the  lapse  of  many  years,  to  make 
itself  strongly  felt  in  federal  affairs  and  to  influence 
vastly  the  history  of  the  United  States.  A  sturdy,  strong 
people  they  were,  of  boundless  self-reliance,  entirely 
uncorrupted  by  money,  and  despite  their  hard  and  nar 
row  surroundings,  possessed  of  many  of  the  gentler 
virtues,  yet  given  to  furious  and  uncontrollable  outbursts 
of  passion  in  which  the  animal  nature  of  man  assumed 
complete  sway. 

All  these  tendencies  will  be  found  exemplified  in  Ben- 
ton,  who  was  kindness  itself  at  home  and  in  the  presence 
of  women,  but  in  whom  the  flash  and  outbreak  of  a  fiery 
mind  was  often  conspicuous.  Always  self-assertive  and 
aggressive  in  public  life,  he  was,  both  as  a  young  man 
and  later,  completely  carried  away  by  temper  at  times 
and  swept  into  desperate  conflicts  with  those  who  stood 
in  his  way. 
42 


EARLY   YEARS  43 

There  was  every  inducement  to  him  in  his  surround 
ings  to  cultivate  the  hardy  virtues.  Living  on  the  edge 
of  civilization,  almost  interminable  forests  stretched 
beyond  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  and  these  were 
absolutely  unclaimed  and  could  hardly  be  travelled  except 
on  narrow  and  winding  trails,  which  belonged  to  the 
treacherous  red  man  of  the  forest  quite  as  much  as  to  his 
civilized  rival.  Mrs.  Fremont  writes  that  Benton  and 
his  brothers  were  urged  by  their  mother  to  cultivate  a 
wholesome  out-of-door  life,  and  she  was  often  delighted 
as  a  child  by  his  stories  of  their  hunting  experiences.  The 
boys  had  gun,  dogs,  and  a  gray  horse,  and  doubtless  the 
subject  of  this  book  often  roamed  around  his  home  in 
the  companionship  of  these  delightful  friends,  acquiring 
strength  and  at  the  same  time  unconsciously  instilling 
into  his  mind  that  knowledge  of  mountains  and  water 
courses  which  was  later  to  be  so  useful  to  him  in  some 
of  the  great  problems  of  his  life-work. 

The  forest,  too,  must  have  had  its  influence  upon  his 
character.  All  writers  who  have  seen  wide  regions  cov 
ered  with  virgin  forest  speak  of  its  mysterious  solemnity. 
Absolutely  terrifying  to  not  a  few  natures,  it  produces 
on  most  a  feeling  akin  to  awe,  while  some  find  in  it  an 
approach  to  absolute  peace  on  earth.  But  it  is  so  vast, 
so  silent,  and  so  unspeakably  lonely,  that  the  utter  insig 
nificance  of  self  is  irresistibly  forced  upon  the  senses  of 
nearly  all.  The  forests  of  this  southern  region  consisted 
of  a  much  higher  timber  than  those  of  much  of  the  far 
North  and  abounded  in  magnificent  oaks,  chestnuts, 
hickories,  beeches,  walnuts,  tulip-trees,  and  many  others, 
so  that  the  sun's  rays  had  to  penetrate  through  an  enor 
mous  mass  of  foliage  before  they  could  even  reach  the 
rank  underbrush  beneath. 

In  these  vast  hidden  recesses  and  in  the  open  spaces 
to  be  found  here  and  there,  existed  at  that  time  a  pro 
fusion  of  game,  large  and  small.  Buffalo  were  not  far 


44         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

away,  and  elk,  deer,  bear,  and  many  other  wild  denizens 
of  the  forest  must  have  roamed  close  to  the  Benton  home. 
Smaller  game  existed  in  large  numbers,  and  migrating 
hordes  of  birds  swept  by  or  stopped  for  rest  and  food  in 
their  mysterious  flight  from  the  far  distant  regions  of  the 
north  or  south  in  such  multitudes  as  can  be  found  only 
in  a  country  having  a  very  large  unsettled  area. 

At  the  time  when  the  Bentons  removed  to  their  new 
^home,  settlers  had  been  for  some  years  pouring  into 
Tennessee  and  as  far  west  as  the  Cumberland  River 
region  in  great  numbers.  This  latter  district,  first  set 
tled  by  the  whites  under  Robertson  in  the  year  1779, 
had  had  many  a  terrible  experience  of  ruthless  Indian 
slaughter,  and  its  settlement  was  moreover  vastly 
retarded  by  the  refusal  of  the  Spanish  for  many  years  to 
allow  the  colonists  to  navigate  the  Mississippi  and  carry 
their  produce  to  a  market.  Still,  as  early  as  1792  settlers 
had  begun  to  throng  in,  and  an  immense  rush  began  in 
1796,  when  the  last  serious  Indian  uprising  was  crushed 
and  when  at  last  Spain  had  yielded  to  the  inevitable  and 
Thomas  Pinckney's  Treaty  of  1795  had  secured  to  the 
American  people  the  full  right  to  the  navigation  of  the 
Mississippi  River. 

This  latter  point  was  the  vital  matter  for  the  settlers 
"  beyond  the  mountains,"  without  which  they  had  no 
way  of  disposing  of  their  produce  and  could  never  possi 
bly  have  prospered  with  the  means  of  transportation 
then  known  to  the  world.  In  this  same  momentous  year 
for  the  new  settlements  Tennessee  was  admitted  into  the 
Union  as  a  State  with  a  population  of  over  76,000. 

Baily,  who  has  already  been  quoted,  says  that  Nash 
ville  contained  in  1797  about  sixty  or  eighty  families,  and 
that  the  houses  composing  it — chiefly  of  logs  and  frame — 
were  scattered  over  quite  an  extended  tract.  In  the 
neighborhood  were  several  smaller  settlements  where 
farmers  lived  more  or  less  closely  together,  and  the  Ben- 


EARLY    YEARS  45 

tons  seem  to  have  founded  one  more  of  these  outposts 
of  civilization.  They  had  doubtless  come  to  Tennessee 
with  the  intention  of  settling,  as  they  did,  on  a  part  of 
the  tract  taken  up  by  Jesse  Benton,  and  Benton  writes 
in  his  autobiography  that  "  the  family  went  upon  a  choice 
tract  of  three  thousand  acres  at  West  Harpeth,  twenty- 
five  miles  south  of  Nashville." 

They  were  at  the  very  verge  of  civilization,  sur 
rounded  by  a  thousand  difficulties  of  a  most  serious 
nature  to  be  encountered  by  a  widow  and  minor  children. 
Benton  writes  in  his  autobiography  in  regard  to  these 
early  days : 

"  The  widow  Benton's  settlement  was  the  outside  settlement 
between  civilization  and  the  powerful  southern  tribes  which  spread 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  The  Indian  wars  had  just  been  terminated, 
and  the  boundary  \vhich  these  great  tribes  were  enabled  to  exact 
brought  their  frontier  almost  to  the  gates  of  Nashville — within 
twenty-five  miles,  for  the  line  actually  touched  the  outside  line  of 
the  estate.  The  Indians  swarmed  about  it.  Their  great  war  trace  * 
(the  trace  on  which  they  came  for  blood  and  plunder  in  time  of 
war,  for  trade  in  time  of  peace)  led  through  it.  Such  a  position 
was  not  to  be  maintained  by  a  small  family  alone — a  widow,  and 
every  child  under  age,  only  some  twenty-odd  slaves.  It  required 
strength  and  found  it  in  the  idea  of  a  little  colony — leases  to  set 
tlers  without  price  for  seven  years;  moderate  rents  afterwards. 
.  .  .  Settlers  came;  the  ground  was  covered  over:  it  was  called 
"  Benton-town,"  and  retains  the  name  to  this  day  A  A  rude  log 
school-house,  a  meeting-house  of  the  same  primitive  '  nature,  with 
roads  and  mills,  completed  the  rapid  conversion  of  this  wilderness 
into  an  abode  of  civilization." 

The  "  Benton-town"  of  that  day  was  a  subdivision  of 
the  larger  region  known  as  West  Harpeth,  while  now 
the  latter  name  has  come  to  be  confined  to  a  region  some 
few  miles  to  the  east.  The  lapse  of  time,  too,  has  seen 

*  Benton  uses  the  word  which  was  customary  in  his  youth  in 
the  Southwest.  "  Trail,"  the  word  used  in  other  portions  of  the 
country,  has  since  come  to  be  generally  employed. 


46          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  name  of  Benton-town  almost  absolutely  fade  away 
even  from  local  knowledge,  giving  place  at  first  to  Hills- 
boro,  while  this  in  turn  is  now  superseded  by  that  of 
Leiper's  Fork. 

The  latter  is  the  name  of  the  post-office  of  the  region 
and  is  taken  from  the  stream  on  whose  banks  it  is  situ 
ated.  It  lies  nine  miles  west  of  the  town  of  Franklin, 
which  again  is  about  eighteen  miles  southerly  from 
Nashville.  Here  was  built  at  first  a  mere  cabin  for  the 
family  to  live  in,  while  this  was  replaced  a  little  later 
by  the  partly  stone  and  partly  wooden  structure,  a  picture 
of  which  is  reproduced.  This  latter  is  a  squat-looking 
building,  owing  to  the  fact  that  its  first  story  or  stone 
portion  was  dug  into  the  ground  about  three  feet,  and  is 
said  by  one  conversant  with  the  early  history  of  the 
region  "to  bear  the  unmistakable  stamp  of  our  pioneer' 
homes — something  of  a  fort  as  well  as  a  dwelling" 
though  of  a  far  better  class  than  most  houses  of  the  kind 
in  its  day. 

But  little  has  reached  me  in  regard  to  these  early 
days  of  the  Bentons  in  Tennessee,  but  in  1853,  when  the 
eldest  son  was  an  old  man,  he  sought  out  in  Washington 
a  resident  *  of  his  old  Tennessee  region,  who  had  come 
to  the  capital  to  the  inauguration  of  Pierce,  and  asked 
many  questions  and  told  some  stories,  dwelling  with  an 
old  man's  delight  on  the  memories  of  his  youthful  strug 
gles  and  successes. 

From  this  interview  it  appears  that  there  were  at 
first  only  about  fifteen  acres  of  cleared  land  in  front  of 
the  family  residence  and  that  on  this  they  for  a  time 

*  Dr.  George  B.  Hunter,  of  Leiper's  Fork,  Tennessee,  to  whom 
I  am  very  much  indebted  for  an  account  of  this  interview  and  for 
a  photograph  of  the  Benton  home.  I  am  equally  indebted  to  Col. 
Randal  M.  Ewing,  of  Franklin,  Tennessee,  for  a  great  deal  of  aid 
as  to  Benton's  early  years  and  as  to  matters  of  local  history  and 
geography. 


EARLY    YEARS 


47 


cultivated  corn.  Benton  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  it  grew 
very  high  and  thick,  and  that  they  had  so  much  trouble 
in  obtaining  meal  that  they  built  a  u  horse-mill,"  but 
here  again  they  met  with  many  troubles  from  their  entire 
ignorance  of  milling.  Hunting  for  deer  and  other  game 
formed  a  good  part  of  their  occupation,  and  Benton  said 
that  it  was  in  this  way  that  he  fed  the  family  for  the 
first  year  or  so. 

Benton  was  as  eager  as  a  boy  in  asking  whether  there 
was  any  tradition  still  lingering  of  his  skill  with  the  rifle, 
and  he  then  went  on  to  speak  of  a  fine  spring  in  the 
region  where  he  used  to  "  win"  beef.  Here  it  was  the 
custom  to  assemble  on  Saturday  afternoons  for  what 
was  locally  known  as  a  "  shooting-match."  A  neighbor 
having  a  steer  for  sale  would  drive  him  over  to  this  ren 
dezvous  and  fix  a  price  on  him,  when  those  wishing  to 
participate  in  the  match  paid  their  ratable  part  of  the  as 
sessed  value,  and  then  the  sport  began.  The  one  making 
the  best  shots  secured  the  choice  of  "  quarters,"  which 
were  five  in  number — the  two  fore  and  hind  ones,  while 
the  fifth  quarter  was  composed  of  the  hide  and  tallow. 

It  is  also  said  that  stories  are  still  told  in  the  regions 
about  Franklin  that  Benton  and  his  brothers  were  pug 
nacious  and  often  involved  in  fights  with  their  neighbors 
with  fist  and  pistol,  but  I  doubt  whether  any  great  re 
liance  is  to  be  placed  upon  these  at  this  distance  of 
time.  Such  tendencies  must  in  any  event  be  regarded 
merely  as  the  taints  of  liberty  incident  to  a  free  life  and 
common  to  him  and  his  neighbors. 

In  a  few  years  the  Bentons  began  to  grow  cotton  in 
their  remote  home  with  the  aid  of  their  negro  slaves,  and 
their  hopes  must  have  been  high.  The  eldest  son  stated 
many  years  later  in  a  speech  *  in  the  Senate  that  "  the 
price  of  I5c.  a  pound  which  had  been  paid  for  it,  and 

*  C.  D.,  2ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  1829-30,  vol.  vi.,  part  i,  p.  103. 


48         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

three  or  four  hundred  pounds  to  the  acre,  and  so  many 
acres  to  the  hand,  had  filled  us  all  with  golden  hopes." 
He  goes  on,  too,  with  a  pleasing  picture  of  how,  as  a  lad, 
one  day  in  1802  he  drove  from  their  plantation  into 
Nashville  to  sell  the  summer's  crop  and  exchange  it  for 
salt  and  other  indispensable  articles,  but  was  confronted 
with  the  astounding  news  that  the  port  of  New  Orleans 
had  been  closed,  their  crop  could  not  be  marketed,  and 
absolutely  nothing  could  be  done  with  it. 

This  was  a  stunning  blow,  and  one  which  set  the 
whole  West  on  fire,  but  other  disappointments  and  sor 
rows  were  also  the  lot  of  the  Bentons.  One  fine  night 
Thomas  and  his  three  brothers,  with  the  head  negroes, 
went  out  to  admire  the  ripened  cotton,  white  and  beau 
tiful  in  the  moonlight,  and  doubtless  speculated  on  what 
they  could  get  for  it  after  gathering  the  crop  and 
floating  it  down  to  New  Orleans;  but  the  very  next 
morning  showed  the  whole  black  from  frost  and  ruined 
— and  their  labor  and  hopes  for  that  season  were  gone 
to  naught.  This  is  said  by  Mrs.  Fremont  to  have  deter 
mined  her  father  against  planting,  as  "  a  pursuit  of  which 
he  could  not  influence  the  results,"  while  Benton  himself, 
speaking  in  1853  of  his  giving  up  farming,  said  that  on 
some  occasion  when  he  had  just  finished  ploughing  a  field 
of  corn,  he  cast  the  plough  into  the  fence  corner,  saying  to 
"  the  boys"  that  there  was  an  easier  way  of  making  a 
living  than  ploughing,  and  he  then  added  that  after  this 
he  never  ploughed  again. 

Far  worse  trials  than  the  loss  of  a  crop  fell  to  the 
lot  of  the  family,  and  particularly  to  that  of  the  mother. 
All  of  her  eight  children  grew  up  apparently  full  of 
health  and  fine  promise,  but  five  *  then  died,  as  their 

*  Biographical  sketch  of  Senator  Benton  in  connection  with 
Western  Exploration,  by  Jessie  Benton  Fremont,  in  Memoirs  of  My 
Life,  by  John  Charles  Fremont, 


EARLY    YEARS  49 

father  had  before  them,  of  rapid  consumption.  The 
"  Grave  of  the  Three  Sisters"  was  long  a  known  land 
mark  near  the  Benton  home,  and  we  shall  see  later  that 
the  same  fatal  disease  which  carried  them  off  came  near 
to  robbing  America  of  one  of  her  great  statesmen  in  the 
person  of  the  subject  of  this  biography. 

From  a  very  early  day  Benton  was  a  student  and  a 
great  reader.  When  still  a  mere  boy,  he  read  with  his 
mother's  aid  in  the  great  folio  volumes  of  "  English 
State  Trials,"  which  had  been  in  his  father's  library,  and 
a  deep  impression  was  made  upon  his  mind  by  their 
hideous  stories  of  cruelty  and  oppression,  of  which  he 
spoke  *  as  follows  in  1830: 

"  We  have  read  and  heard  much  of  late  years,  of  the  madness 
and  violence  of  the  people — the  tyranny  and  oppression  of  military 
leaders;  but  we  have  heard  nothing  of  judicial  tyranny,  judicial 
oppression,  and  judicial  subserviency  to  the  will  and  ambition  of 
the  King  or  President  of  a  country.  Nothing  has  been  said  on  this 
branch  of  the  subject,  and  nothing  that  I  have  ever  seen,  or  read  of, 
has  sunk  so  deep  upon  my  mind  as  the  history  of  judicial  tyranny, 
exemplified  in  the  submission  of  the  judges  to  the  will  of  those  who 
made  them.  My  very  early  reading  led  me  to  the  contemplation 
of  the  most  impressive  scenes  of  this  character  which  the  history 
of  any  country  affords — I  speak  of  the  British  State  Trials,  which 
I  read  at  seven  or  eight  f  years  old,  under  the  direction  of  a  mother, 
then  a  very  young,  now  an  aged  widow.  It  was  her  wish  to  form 
her  children  to  a  love  of  liberty  and  a  hatred  of  tyranny,  and  I  had 
wept  over  the  fate  of  Raleigh,  and  Russell,  and  Sydney,  and  I  will 
add,  the  Lady  Alice  Lyle,  before  I  could  realize  the  conception  that 
they  belonged  to  a  different  country,  and  a  different  age,  from  my 
own.  I  drank  deep  at  that  fountain !  I  drew  up  repeated,  copious, 
and  overflowing  draughts  of  grief  and  sorrow  for  suffering  victims 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  i,  1829-30,  p.  113. 

1 1  think  that  this  must  be  another  instance  of  Benton's  occa 
sional  inaccuracy  as  to  details  of  little  importance.  He  was  eight 
years  old  when  his  father  died,  and  he  wrote  in  his  autobiography 
that  he  was  "  at  the  age  of  ten  or  twelve  reading  solid  books  with 
his  mother  and  studying  the  great  examples  of  history,"  and  then 
immediately  refers  to  the  State  Trials  and  his  early  reading  in  them. 

4 


50          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

— of  resentment,  fear,  and  terror,  for  their  cruel  oppressors.  Noth 
ing  which  I  have  read  in  history  since,  not  even  the  massacres  of 
Marius  and  Sylla,  nor  the  slaughters  of  the  French  Revolution, 
have  sunk  so  deep  upon  my  mind  as  the  scenes  which  the  British 
State  Trials  disclosed  to  me ;  the  view  of  the  illustrious  of  the 
land  seized,  upon  the  hint  of  the  King,  carried  to  the  dungeon,  from 
the  dungeon  to  the  court,  from  the  court  to  the  scaffold ;  there,  the 
body  half-hung,  cut  down  half-alive,  the  belly  ript  open,  and  the 
bowels  torn  out,  the  limbs  divided  and  stuck  over  gates,  the  prop 
erty  confiscated  to  the  King,  the  blood  of  the  family  attainted,  and 
widows  and  orphans  turned  out  to  scorn  and  want." 

In  the  Preface  to  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View,"  while 
giving  his  reasons  for  writing  the  book,  he  speaks  of 
the  influence  of  some  lessons  of  history  upon  him,  and 
tells  how  profoundly,  either  during  his  early  days  near 
Nashville  or  still  earlier,  Chatham's  encomium  on  the 
founders  of  our  republic  had  impressed  him.  "  It  sunk 
deeply,"  he  says,  "  into  my  memory  at  the  time,  and 
what  is  more,  into  my  heart,  and  has  remained  there  ever 
since."  And  again,  in  the  autobiography,  speaking  of 
his  early  life  on  the  plantation  near  Nashville,  he  writes  ! 
that  at  no  other  period  of  life  did  he  "  read  so  much,  nor 
with  as  much  system  and  regularity,  nor  with  the  same 
profit  and  delight." 

Already  at  this  time  his  tastes  seem  to  have  taken 
shape,  and  history  and  geography  were  evidently  his 
favorite  studies  and  what  he  considered  his  light  reading ; 
while  "  national  law,  the  civil  law,  the  common  law— 
and  finally  the  law  itself  as  usually  read  by  students- 
constituted  his  studies.  All  this  was  carried  on  during 
the  active  personal  exertions  which  he  gave  to  the  open 
ing  of  the  farm."  It  was,  moreover,  no  doubt  largely  a 
reminiscence  of  his  own  life  at  about  this  period,  when 
he  said  *  years  later  of  a  deceased  member  of  the  United 
States  Senate  that  they  had  first  met  more  than  a  third 

*  Speech  on  Alexander  Porter.     C.  G.,  2Oth  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp. 

221,   222. 


EARLY    YEARS  51 

of  a  century  before  on  the  banks  of  the  Cumberland, 
near  Nashville,  and  that  the  deceased  there  "  belonged 
to  a  circle  of  young  lawyers  and  students  at  law,  who 
had  the  world  before  them  and  nothing  but  their  exer 
tions  to  depend  upon.  ...  It  was  the  custom  of  all  that 
belonged  to  it  to  spend  their  leisure  hours  in  the  delight 
ful  occupation  of  reading.  History,  poetry,  elocution, 
biography,  the  ennobling  speeches  of  the  living  and  the 
dead  were  our  social  recreation." 

Benton  took  up  the  study  of  the  law  as  a  serious  pro 
fession  in  the  early  years  of  the  century,  but  except  that 
he  seems  to  have  been  familiar  with  Blackstone  and 
even  many  years  later  showed  at  times  accurate  knowl 
edge  of  some  of  the  technical  distinctions  of  the  law, 
I  have  learned  nothing  of  his  studies.  He  was  at  the 
same  time  teaching  school  on  Duck  River  near  his  home, 
and  of  course  aiding  to  keep  up  the  farm. 

He  was  not  long  in  the  Nashville  region,  before 
Andrew  Jackson  began  to  have  an  influence  upon  his  - 
career.  About  the  time  of  his  arrival  in  Nashville,  he 
heard  Jackson,  then  a  judge  of  the  Superior  Court, 
charge  a  jury,  and  records  how  some  slight  solecism  in 
language,  which  the  judge  was  guilty  of,  grated  on  his 
ears.  Only  a  few  years  later  they  met  again,  as  Jackson 
was  returning  from  a  Southern  trip  in  which  he  had 
passed  some  Indian  towns  and  camps,  and  they  entered 
into  conversation.  Jackson  was  some  fifteen  years  the 
older,  so  he  could  well  take  an  interest  in  the  younger 
man  and  encourage  him,  as  he  did,  by  expressing  a  belief 
that  he  would  do  well  at  the  bar — "  generous  words," 
Benton  says,  "  which  had  the  effect  of  promoting  what 
they  undertook  to  foretell."  At  this  interview  Jackson 
did  not  know  the  name  of  the  young  man  speaking  to 
him  until  he  asked  it,  when  he  at  once  found  a  bond  of 
union  in  the  hospitality  he  had  received  at  the  house  of 
Jesse  Benton  in  North  Carolina. 


52          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Not  very  long  after  this,  Jackson  had  another  oppor 
tunity  to  show  an  interest  in  the  younger  man :  the  lat 
ter  was  engaged  as  junior  counsel  in  an  important  crim 
inal  case,  in  which  Haywood,  Grundy,  and  White,  the 
oldest  and  ablest  counsel  of  the  section,  were  also  con 
cerned.  Benton  writes  that  his  speech  was  on  behalf  of 
the  side  towards  which  Jackson's  feelings  inclined,  and 
that  the  latter  complimented  him,  and  it  is  evident  that 
a  friendship  sprang  up  between  them  about  this  time. 

Benton  began  the  practice  of  the  law  in  Franklin, 
and  "  the  little  brick  tenement  which  he  first  occupied 
as  an  office"  was  still  in  a  good  state  of  preservation  in 
1876  and  was  often  pointed  out  to  passing  travellers.  In 
a  few  years  he  moved  to  Nashville  and  opened  an  office 
there,  but  it  does  not  seem  that  he  had  a  very  large  prac 
tice  at  the  Tennessee  bar.  In  his  autobiographical 
sketch  he  says  that  practice  and  success  followed  his  ad 
mission  as  a  lawyer,  and  that  he  received  support  and 
countenance  from  Jackson,  James  Robertson,  Judge 
McNairy,  Major  Thomas  Hardeman,  "  and  other  old 
heads  of  the  population;"  but  in  1855  ne  referred  to 
himself  as  having  been  in  1812  "a  young  lawyer  with 
more  books  than  briefs,"  and  Foote  writes  that  he  at  no 
time  enjoyed  a  large  practice  and  "  from  the  first  was 
much  fonder  of  political  pursuits  than  of  the  study  of 
law-books,  and  greatly  preferred  the  making  of  stump 
speeches  to  the  argument  of  legal  causes."  He  was  ad 
mitted  to  the  bar  in  1806  by  Judge  Hugh  Lawson  White, 
and  received  many  acts  of  kindness  as  a  young  lawyer 
from  Felix  Grundy,* 


*  Bench  and  Bar  of  the  South  and  Southwest,  by  Henry  St 
Foote,  p.  160.  Parton's  Jackson,  i.,  p.  363.  View,  ii.,  p.  186;  C.  G., 
26th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  63.  Benton's  early  law-office  in  Franklin 
was  destroyed  by  fire  about  1890,  I  am  informed  by  CoL  Randal  M. 
Ewing,  of  Franklin. 


EARLY    YEARS  53 

Some  of  Benton's  associates  in  his  early  days  have 
been  mentioned,  but  it  is  evident  that  he  was  especially 
intimate  at  the  Jackson  house,  and  he  was  a  great  friend 
of  Mrs.  Jackson,  who  was,  according  to  him,  a  most 
delightful  hostess,  always  taking  care  of  the  modest  and 
retiring  guest  and  putting  every  one  at  ease.  Very  fond 
of  young  people,  she  constantly  had  her  house  full  of 
them,  and  was  affectionately  called  "  Aunt  Rachel"  by 
Benton  and  other  intimates. 

But  one  story  of  an  earlier  period  needs  to  be  told 
here,  and  is  an  instance  of  how  much  evil  may  be  worked 
at  times  by  the  perpetrators  of  practical  jokes.  It  will 
be  seen  later  that  Benton  was  an  egotistical  man,  and 
he  evidently  had  the  same  tendency  as  a  youth.  Upon 
some  occasion — probably  while  he  still  lived  in  North 
Carolina — he  and  a  number  of  his  cousins  were  staying 
together  somewhere  and  his  manner  irritated  his  asso 
ciates  until  they  determined  to  play  a  joke  upon  him. 
Accordingly,  they  took  his  cravat,  while  he  was  asleep, 
and  hid  five  dollars  in  it :  and  the  next  morning  at 
breakfast  one  of  the  lads  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket,  said 
he  had  lost  five  dollars,  and  asserted  that  some  of  the 
party  had  taken  his  money.  All  protested  innocence,  but 
finally  it  was  proposed  to  search  every  one,  and  the 
money  was  of  course  found  secreted  on  Benton's  per 
son.  His  anger  and  mortification  knew7  no  bounds,  while 
his  tormentors  enjoyed  their  triumph  for  some  time,  but 
finally  explained  to  him  the  trick  they  had  played. 

This  miserable  joke  grew  to  a  story  or  a  whole 
progeny  of  stories  of  his  having  been  caught  stealing  as 
a  young  fellow,  and  with  the  immense  vitality  which 
always  characterizes  such  rumors  would  never  down. 
To  the  very  end  of  his  public  career,  quite  as  much  as 
half  a  century  after  the  joke  was  played,  the  charge 
it  grew  into  was  whispered  abroad  against  him,  was 
thrown  at  him  by  Foote  in  their  contest,  and  was  regu- 


54          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

larly  unearthed  and  brought  to  bear  whenever  his  name 
was  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  Presidency. 

To  the  same  parentage  is  doubtless  also  to  be  traced 
the  story  that  he  got  into  some  violent  quarrel  at  the 
University  of  North  Carolina,  and  was  expelled  from  his 
literary  society  for  theft.  Years  later,  this  story  goes 
on,  after  he  had  become  a  great  man,  the  authorities  re 
instated  him  and  sent  him  a  notice  to  that  effect,  but  he, 
disgusted  with  what  he  thought  servility  on  their  part, 
simply  returned  it  with  the  laconic  answer  "  Go  to  h — 11." 

This  latter  story  has  reached  me  twice  in  my  investi 
gations,  and  I  have  thought  best  to  refer  to  it  and  the 
whole  baleful  progeny  here.  Benton  himself  always 
treated  the  charges  with  silent  contempt,  doubtless  think 
ing  his  most  exemplary  life  the  best  answer,  and  the  only 
contemporary  reference  to  it  from  his  side  that  I  have 
come  across  is  contained  in  the  sketch  of  him  in  the 
Democratic  Review  *  in  1837,  which  simply  says,  "  His 
reputation  has  been  frequently  assailed,  with  reference 
to  his  early  youth,  with  slanders  utterly  false  and  base, 
of  which  he  has  never  condescended  to  take  the  slightest 
notice."  It  remained  for  one  who  can  by  no  means  be 
classed  as  a  political  admirer,  and  who  wrote  some  forty 
years  after  his  death,  to  furnish  the  explanation  in  the 
"  cravat  story"  which  I  have  given  above.  She  says  f 
that  this  was  told  her  by  Rebecca  Hart,  one  of  the  young 
cousins  who  was  actually  present  at  the  time,  and  there 
can  be  no  question  that  it  furnishes  the  true  and  only 
explanation  of  the  vague  but  so  long-lived  charges. 

*  October-December  number,  vol.  i.,  pp.  83-90.  This  was  one 
of  a  series  of  sketches  of  leading  public  men,  and  I  think  it  likely 
that  they  were  all  more  or  less  revised  by  the  subjects  of  the  sketches. 

f  The  True  History  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  its  Re 
peal,  by  Mrs.  Archibald  Dixon,  foot-note  to  p,  378. 


CHAPTER    IV 

ENTRANCE     UPON     PUBLIC     AFFAIRS SERVICES     IN     THE 

STATE    LEGISLATURE AARON    BURR 

THERE  was  very  great  dissatisfaction  throughout 
Tennessee  early  in  the  century  with  the  law-system  of  the 
State,  and  complaints  were  many  that  suits  never  reached 
an  end  and  that  parties  had  to  go  to  far-off  counties  to 
have  their  causes  heard.  It  seems  that  there  was  a  system 
of  county  courts,  but  the  judges  were  not  required  to  be 
learned  in  the  law,  and  consequently  appeals  were  always 
taken  to  the  district  courts. 

All  this  became  a  subject  of  public  discussion,  and 
various  grand  juries  took  the  subject  up  and  called  the 
system  grievous.  In  1808  Benton  published  a  series  of 
articles  upon  it  in  the  Impartial  Review  and  Cumberland 
Repository  under  the  name  of  "  Sir  John  Oldcastle,"  in 
which  he  denounced  the  existing  system  with  much  force 
and  advocated  reforms  calculated  in  particular  to  bring 
justice  near  to  every  man's  door.  He  ridiculed  the  sys 
tem  of  equity  by  which  witnesses  were  examined  under 
written  interrogatories,  and  were  allowed  to  "  purge 
themselves"  by  their  answers.  Describing  the  care  with 
which  a  skilful  lawyer  would  instruct  his  client  just  what 
to  swear  to  and  what  to  leave  out  in  such  an  answer,  Sir 
John  Oldcastle  asks,  in  truly  Bentonian  style,  "  Is  this 
the  way  to  purge  a  man  on  oath?  .  .  .  No,  sir;  if  a 
man  is  to  be  purged  on  oath,  let  him  be  purged  in  the 
open  court,  in  the  face  of  the  jury,  under  the  eyes  of  the 
judges,  and  by  the  scrutinizing  questions  of  sharp  attor- 
nies.  This  is  the  way  to  drag  truth  out  of  his  bowels  in 

55 


56         LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

defiance  of  all  his  twistings,  twinings,  and  attempts  to 
hide  it." 

He  advocated  also  the  abolition  of  equity  as  a  sepa 
rate  system  and  wanted  it  blended  with  the  law,  thus 
early  favoring  a  plan  of  administration  then  but  little 
known  but  since  widely  adopted  throughout  the  English- 
speaking  world.  He  stated  that  the  main  purpose  of  his 
articles  was  to  bring  about  a  union  of  effort  for  the  re 
form,  and  many  years  later  said  that  he  had  had  consider 
able  trepidation  upon  publishing  the  articles,  which  were 
his  first  essays  in  print.  According  to  the  custom  of  the 
day,  other  writers  took  a  share  in  the  discussion,  and 
various  papers,  by  Pericles,  Manlius,  Junius,  Brutus,  and 
Farmer,  were  published  in  the  same  newspaper. 

It  is  not  impossible  that  these  articles  of  Benton  led 
to  his  election  to  the  Tennessee  Senate,  and  he  served  a 
term  in  the  year  1809,  and  was  the  author  of  the  act 
which  was  passed  at  that  session  remodelling  the  judi 
ciary.  He  induced  Hugh  Lawson  White  to  accept  a  posi 
tion  on  the  Supreme  Bench  under  it,  and  he  writes  that 
he  then  felt  his  new  system  was  safe.* 

While  in  the  Senate  Benton  took  an  active  part,  and 
was  concerned  in  some  measures  which  are  well  worthy 
of  mention.  Early  in  the  session,  he  introduced  a  resolu 
tion  for  a  joint  committee  "  to  inquire  if  any,  and  if  any 
what,  alteration  is  necessary  to  be  made  in  the  present 
mode  of  trying  slaves,  when  the  lives  of  said  slaves  may 
be  affected  by  the  decision  of  the  charge  whereof  they 

*  It  was  at  one  time  a  disputed  point  in  Tennessee  whether  or 
not  Benton  was  the  author  of  these  articles,  but  the  late  Hon.  John 
M.  Lea  wrote  and  asked  him  many  years  ago  and  told  me  that  Ben- 
ton  had  answered  affirmatively  and  had  told  him  of  his  trepidation. 
Benton  also  stated  to  Judge  Lea  that  he  had  penned  the  new  judi 
ciary  act.  Thirty  Years'  View,  ii.,  p.  184.  Sir  John  Oldcastle  was 
a  friend  of  the  Lollards,  and  his  castle  was  their  headquarters ;  he 
was  executed  in  1418. 


IN   THE    STATE    SENATE  57 

stand  implicated — and  also  what  amendments,  if  any,  are 
necessary  to  be  made  to  the  existing  laws  of  this  State, 
relative  to  the  emancipation  of  slaves,  and  the  regulation 
of  free  negroes  in  this  State,  with  leave  to  report  by  bill 
or  otherwise." 

A  committee,  of  which  Benton  was  one,  was  accord 
ingly  appointed,  but  I  have  been  unable  to  find  that  they 
ever  reported  or  that  any  law  upon  the  subject  was 
enacted,  though  he  wrote  in  his  biographical  sketch  that 
he  was  in  the  Tennessee  Senate  the  author  of  "  a  humane 
law,  still  on  the  statute-books,  giving  to  slaves  the  full 
benefit  of  jury-trial,  which  was  the  right  of  white  men 
under  the  same  accusation."  *  And  on  another  occasion 
he  voted  f  for  the  abolition  of  imprisonment  for  debt, 
upon  the  honest  surrender  by  the  debtor  of  his  property, 
thus  taking  an  advanced  position  on  that  subject,  and  at 
the  same  time  adding  a  condition  to  enforce  absolutely 
fair  dealing,  to  the  spirit  of  which  he  will  be  found 
adhering  many  years  later. 

At  this  early  day,  too.  his  views  on  the  proper  method 
of  dealing  with  the  public  lands  had  taken  shape,  and  he 
advocated  in  the  Tennessee  Senate  in  1809  the  same 
rights  of  pre-emption  for  the  actual  settler  on  the  land 

*  My  own  investigations  having  failed  to  solve  this  difficulty, 
the  late  Hon.  John  M.  Lea,  of  Nashville,  kindly  had  a  search  made 
for  a  report  from  Benton's  committee  or  a  statute  of  about  that 
date  upon  the  subject,  but  without  success.  Is  it  possible  that  Ben- 
ton's  agitation  of  the  subject  produced  the  result  he  writes  of 
without  the  passage  of  a  formal  law?  Slaves  under  indictment  for 
capital  offences  were  at  least  later  tried  in  the  same  way  as  free 
people.  See  Jacob  v.  The  State,  3  Humphreys's  Reports,  493,  and 
Section  2632  of  Meigs  and  Cooper's  Code  of  Tennessee,  1858,  which 
provided  that  "  the  trial  of  a  slave  for  a  capital  offence  shall  be 
conducted  in  the  same  manner  as  that  of  a  free  person." 

t  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  89.  My  other  state 
ments  in  regard  to  his  service  in  the  Tennessee  Legislature  are 
derived  from  the  Journals  of  the  Senate. 


58         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

which  he  so  persistently  urged  later  on  a  wider  forum 
and  at  last  lived  to  see  triumph,  after  his  efforts  had  for 
years  been  thrust  aside  with  ridicule  as  mere  visionary 
dreams. 

The  actual  settler  on  public  land,  who  had  made 
improvements,  demanded  that  there  should  be  accorded 
to  him  the  first  right  to  purchase  at  the  fixed  price — the 
right  of  pre-emption — in  preference  to  any  other  would- 
be  purchaser,  maybe  a  calculating  "  speculator,"  as  the 
language  of  the  day  dubbed  him,  who  was  led  to  seek 
out  this  particular  tract,  so  as  to  get  the  advantage  of 
the  improvements  already  made;  while  others  main 
tained  that  the  settler's  possession  of  the  land  without 
title  gave  him  no  preference  and  that  any  one  had  an 
equal  right  to  buy  the  special  tract. 

Benton  had  been  in  some  way  early  impressed  with 
the  importance  of  allowing  actual  settlers  to  secure  land 
on  easy  terms,  and  doubtless  the  system  adopted  on  their 
family  tract  of  giving  leases  for  almost  nominal  rents — 
so  as  to  secure  the  coming  of  pioneers  and  the  cultivation 
in  safety  of  their  frontier  farm — had  had  an  important 
influence  in  forming  his  opinion.  He  also  often  cited 
a  case  in  point  of  a  poor  woman  near  Nashville,  known 
as  "  Granny  White,"  who  had  come  from  Western  North 
Carolina  at  the  age  of  sixty,  with  two  young  grandchil 
dren  as  her  only  helpmates,  and  was  allowed  in  her  new 
home  to  occupy  a  small  tract  of  land  at  a  nominal  price. 
With  this  small  corner  of  mother  earth  to  work  on,  she 
saved  so  by  her  labor  and  economy  that  she  came  in  time 
to  own  slaves  and  cattle  and  more  land,  and  was  a  highly 
respected  member  of  the  community,  while  she  had  barely 
been  able  to  keep  out  of  the  poor-house  in  her  home  in 
North  Carolina. 

Benton  cited  her  instance  on  more  than  one  occasion 
in  the  United  States  Senate  as  "  a  noble  illustration  of 
the  advantage  of  giving  land  to  the  poor,"  and  certainly 


IN    THE    STATE    SENATE  59 

the  illustration  was  most  apt.  She  was  evidently  much 
thought  of  in  Tennessee,  and  to  this  day  a  road  leading 
from  Nashville  by  her  place  towards  Franklin  is  known 
as  "  the  Granny  White  road." 

Pre-emption  and  other  questions  concerning  land 
were  constantly  under  discussion  then,  and  during 
Benton's  service  in  the  Legislature  settlers  on  the 
Nolichucky,  French  Broad,  and  other  rivers  came,  he 
said  in  the  Senate  in  1851,*  "to  Knoxville  to  save  their 
homes.  They  approached  me  with  diffidence,  for  I  was  a 
young  lawyer,  and  they  were  afraid  of  lawyers,  and  they 
did  not  know  that  I  had  a  feeling  for  the  settler  who  lived 
up  at  the  head  of  the  creek  and  in  the  gorge  of  the  moun 
tain,  and  who  was  endeavoring,  amidst  danger  and 
privation,  to  get  a  home  of  his  own,  and  wrhich  specula 
tors  attempted  to  take  from  him.  I  took  their  part  then, 
and  assisted  in  the  establishment  of  the  first  pre-emption 
law  ever  known  in  Tennessee." 

But,  though  he  was  thus  active  in  securing  their 
rights  for  those  whom  he  thought  entitled,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  oppose  the  claims  of  settlers  on  lands,  where 
he  thought  they  were  in  the  wrong.  In  at  least  two 
instances  he  opposed  such  bills  w^ith  but  one  or  two  other 
members  siding  with  him. 

In  one  of  these,  some  settlers  on  Battle  Creek,  where 
the  Indian  title  had  not  been  extinguished,  prayed  that 
they  might  be  given  "  the  right  of  preference  [i.e.,  pre 
emption],  whenever  the  State  may  be  possessed  of  the 
soil  by  treaty :"  and  Benton  and  Robert  C.  Foster  voted 
against  the  reference  of  the  petition.  They  filed  a  paper 
expressing  their  reasons,  which  were  that  the  Legislature 
had  no  right  to  pass  a  law  granting  occupancies  where 
the  Indian  title  was  not  extinguished :  that  the  settlers 
had  violated  the  United  States  laws,  which  inflict  a 


*  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  1850-51,  p.  360. 


60         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

penalty  upon  all  intruders  on  Indian  lands :  and  that 
tk  it  would  be  encouraging  a  set  of  deluded  people  to 
incur  the  guilt  of  rebellion  for  this  Legislature  to  author 
ize  them  to  maintain  their  possessions,"  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  it  was  well  understood  the  military  power  of 
the  United  States  had  been  directed  to  expel  by  force  all 
intruders  on  Indian  lands. 

They  were  two  bold  men  who  thus  stood  up  at  that 
day  and  opposed  in  limine  a  measure  intended  to  give 
the  land  to  settlers,  and  the  public  was  not  likely  to  accord 
much  weight  either  to  the  right  of  the  Indian  or  to  the 
laws  of  Congress  passed  by  an  authority  far  off  beyond 
the  mountains.  It  is  characteristic  of  Benton  to  find  him 
thus  in  early  life  voting  against  the  popular  tide  without 
regard  to  consequences  to  himself,  precisely  as  he  did  in 
numbers  of  cases  throughout  his  career  and  finally  to  the 
complete  loss  of  his  political  power  and  position.  And 
it  is  instructive,  too,  to  see  how  at  this  early  day  he  was 
impressed  with  the  need  of  obedience  to  laws  enacted  by 
the  Federal  Government,  even  though  they  were  most  un 
popular.  He  undoubtedly  "  thought  continentally" — to 
use  the  phrase  of  his  time  and  section — from  an  early  date. 

He  was  not  again  in  the  State  Senate,  but  I  have 
found  nothing  directly  to  show  why  this  was  the  case. 
He  served  sixty-seven  days,  was  entitled  to  mileage  for 
four  hundred  miles,  and  received  a  total  sum  from  the 
State  of  two  hundred  and  seven  dollars  and  fifty  cents 
for  his  services. 

One  other  episode  of  these  early  years  of  the  century 
was  no  doubt  vastly  interesting  to  Benton  at  the  time, 
though  almost  no  details  of  his  connection  with  it  have 
survived.  The  project  of  Aaron  Burr  will  always  be 
somewhat  obscure,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he 
tried  to  enlist  in  his  behalf  the  aid  of  Jackson  and  his 
friends,  and  all  went  well  enough  with  this  aim  so  long 
as  the  real  nature  of  the  project  was  kept  concealed. 


IN    THE    STATE    SENATE  61 

But  the  moment  suspicions  came  to  be  bruited  about  that 
there  was  some  design  of  hostility  to  the  United  States, 
Jackson  withdrew  from  the  connection  with  that  posi- 
tiveness  which  marked  his  career  in  everything. 

Burr  was  in  Nashville  and  stayed  with  Jackson  sev 
eral  days  in  the  end  of  May  and  again  early  in  August 
of  1806,  and  he  was  received  with  every  mark  of  distinc 
tion.  Some  of  our  historians  try  to  slur  Jackson  for  this 
fact,  but  such  a  reception  was  only  Burr's  due  for  his 
distinguished  career.  Vice-Presidents  of  the  United 
States  were  not  at  that  time  to  be  found  daily  in  the 
small  town  of  Nashville,  and  Parton  says,  with  truth, 
that  the  fact  that  he  had  killed  Hamilton  in  a  duel  was 
no  discredit  to  him,  but  possibly  a  mark  of  distinction, 
among  the  people  of  Tennessee,  who  were  duellists  them 
selves  and  who  had  generally  detested  Hamilton. 

Besides  this,  Burr  had  earned  the  gratitude  of 
Tennesseeans  by  the  aid  he  gave  them  at  the  time  they 
were  asking  admission  into  the  Union,  and  he  was  more 
over  an  earnest  hater  of  the  Spaniard  and  eager  for  the 
war  with  that  power  which  was  so  often  threatening. 
This  alone  would  have  formed  a  bond  of  union  with  a 
citizen  of  Tennessee  at  any  time  about  that  date.  No 
wonder  then  that  he  was  royally  entertained  and  given 
receptions  and  public  dinners,  while  all  the  town  turned 
out  to  see  him. 

In  the  next  year  again,  in  September,  he  was  a  guest 
of  Jackson  and  was  publicly  feted,  but  his  course  with 
the  people  of  Nashville  \vas  by  that  time  about  run,  and 
he  met  with  a  very  chilly  reception  from  Mrs.  Jackson, 
when  he  called  upon  the  General  once  more  on  December 
14,  at  a  time  when  the  latter  chanced  to  be  away.  A 
few  days  after  this  Jackson  had  an  intervie\v  writh  him, 
at  which  Burr  maintained  stoutly  the  entire  propriety  of 
his  plans  and  doubtless  stuck  to  it  that  his  object  was 
merely  to  settle  a  certain  tract  of  land.  But  Jackson  had 


62          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

been  warned  by  some  anonymous  person  on  November 
10,  and  his  suspicions  were  not  to  be  allayed. 

Towards  the  latter  part  of  December  the  proclama 
tion  of  the  President  denouncing  Burr  reached  Nashville, 
and  the  whole  town  was  at  once  in  a  ferment  of  loyalty. 
Burr  was  burned  in  effigy  and  denounced  as  a  traitor, 
and  in  a  few  days  Jackson  and  other  officers  were  getting 
the  militia  in  readiness  at  the  request  of  the  federal 
authorities.  Robertson — the  sixty-five-years^  old  founder 
of  the  settlement — and  a  number  of  Revolutionary  vet 
erans  at  once  volunteered  their  services,  and  were  known 
as  the  "  Invincible  Grays"  or  "  Silver  Grays."  * 

In  all  these  events  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Ben- 
ton  took  an  active  part.  It  has  been  seen  that  he  was 
an  intimate  at  the  Jackson  house,  and  he  can  hardly  have 
let  such  exciting  occurrences  go  on  without  having  his 
full  share  in  them.  The  only  actual  connection  I  can  find 
of  his  with  it  all,  however,  is  recorded  in  The  Nashville 
Impartial  Review  of  January  3,  1807,  which  reports  the 
hanging  in  effigy  of  Burr  at  Nashville  and  gives  the 
resolutions  of  a  public  meeting  held  at  Franklin  on 
December  27,  1806,  at  which  William  Neelly  was  chair 
man  and  Thomas  H.  Benton  secretary. 

These  resolutions  breathe  great  devotion  to  the 
Union  and  say  that  they  "  would  view  a  separation  from 
the  Federal  Head  as  productive  of  incalculable  evils," 
and  add  that  in  their  opinion  "  there  ought  to  be  an 
annual  interchange  of  the  laws  of  the  State  Legislatures, 
as  a  means  to  assimilate  the  habits  of  the  people,  to 
bring  them  to  a  nearer  state  of  brotherhood,  as  well  as 
to  afford  help  to  the  younger  States."  The  studied 
avoidance  in  the  resolutions  of  any  admission  of  the 
existence  of  a  plot  dangerous  to  the  Union,  when  com- 

*  See  Parton's  Jackson,  i.,  pp.  309-28,  from  which  source  my 
account  of  the  Burr  episode  is  mainly  taken. 


IN    THE    STATE    SENATE  63 

pared  with  some  remarks  of  Benton  in  the  Senate  in 
1848,*  is  possibly  evidence  that  he  was  their  author,  and 
those  curious  as  to  the  feeling  of  the  West  towards  Burr 
and  any  project  of  disunion  will  find  in  that  speech  what 
treatment  Benton  thought  would  have  been  accorded 
Burr  when  his  views  were  known. 

*  C.  G.,  3Oth  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  vol.  xviii.,  p.  1076. 


CHAPTER    V 

FAILURE    IN    HEALTH GROWTH    OF    POLITICAL    VIEWS 

ANDREW    JACKSON WAR    OF     l8l2 THE    NATCHEZ 

EXPEDITION 

AT  some  time  in  early  manhood,  apparently  not  long 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  War  of  1812,  Benton's  health 
failed  him.  It  has  been  already  said  that  five  of  his 
brothers  and  sisters  died  of  consumption,  and  the  same 
dread  disease  threatened  the  life  of  him  we  are  all  accus 
tomed  to  think  of  as  possessed  of  a  superb  physique  and 
of  fine  health.  But  for  a  period  he  seemed  to  be  going 
into  a  decline,  and  constant  fever,  a  hacking  cough,  and 
restless  days  and  nights  made  him  feel  that  his  time  was 
coming.  Mrs.  Fremont  tells  us  that  he  felt  despair  at 
this,  and  once  said :  "  If  it  had  been  a  battle,  I  would 
have  had  a  chance,  or  even  in  a  desperate  duel,  but  for 
this  there  was  no  chance.  All  was  fixed  and  inevitable." 
He  is  said  to  have  hailed  the  outbreak  of  the  war  as  an 
opportunity  to  end  his  life  in  action  rather  than  in  the 
slow  progress  of  a  fatal  disease,  but  the  open-air  life 
cured  him.  His  daughter  writes  that  during  his  cam 
paigning  he  supplied  the  lack  of  plenty  of  clothes  by  con 
stant  bathing  in  running  streams  and  always  dried  his 
skin  in  the  sunshine,  and  all  his  after-life  he  persistently 
sought  these  same  curative  influences;  but  it  is  strange 
to  read  of  a  man  of  such  physique  that  throughout  his 
career  he  was  in  the  habit  of  preparing  for  public  speak 
ing  by  days  of  silence  and  that  the  continued  use  of  his 
voice  in  public  was  almost  sure  to  be  followed  by  flecks 
of  blood  from  the  throat. 

I  have  found  but  little  as  to  his  opinions  of  public 
64 


THE    WAR    OF    1812  65 

affairs  during  the  period  preceding  the  War  of  1812, 
when  Presidents  Jefferson  and  Madison  were  engaged 
in  what  has  been  called  the  Struggle  for  Neutrality,  but 
it  may  probably  be  assumed  that  he  held  in  the  main  the 
views  of  the  section  in  which  he  lived.  The  people  of 
the  Southwest  were  Republicans  and  had  nothing  in 
common  with  the  aristocratic  tendencies  of  the  Feder 
alists.  By  the  very  necessities  of  their  position  and  sur 
roundings,  their  civilization  was  highly  democratic  and 
they  early  imbibed  the  bulk  of  the  Jeffersonian  beliefs, 
and  with  the  Jeffersonian  party  sympathized  with  France 
in  the  desperate  wars  following  upon  her  Revolution. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  these  wars  began — what 
ever  was  the  case  later — in  the  efforts  of  the  allied  powers 
to  crush  the  rising  people  of  France  and  force  upon  them 
again  the  rule  of  absolutism,  and  republican  America 
sympathized  most  deeply  with  her  sister  republic  and 
indulged  in  hopes  for  the  human  race  which  were  des 
tined  to  sad  disappointment. 

There  was  a  promise  for  humanity  at  that  date  in 
the  growth  of  popular  rights,  such  as  the  world  had  not 
known  before,  and  the  imaginations  of  many  were  car 
ried  away.  Too  little  has  been  written  of  these  exuberant 
hopes  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  and  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  but  Benton  showed  that  he  had  felt 
their  influence,  when  he  said  *  of  himself  that,  "  bred  up 
in  habitual  affection  for  the  French  name,  coming  upon 
the  stage  of  life  when  the  glories  of  the  republic  and  of  the 
empire  were  filling  the  world  and  dazzling  the  imagina 
tion,  politically  connected  with  the  party  which,  a  few 
years  ago,  was  called  French,  his  bosom  had  glowed  with 
admiration  for  that  people." 

The  two  great  parties  in  our  country  could  indeed  for 
a  number  of  years  be  distinguished  from  each  other  by 

*  View,  i.,  p.  593. 
5 


66         LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

their  sympathy  with  France  or  with  England :  and  it  was 
only  natural  that,  as  both  the  great  European  combatants 
inflicted  outrage  after  outrage  upon  us,  Americans  dif 
fered  as  to  which  one  we  should  chiefly  oppose.  The 
Republicans  maintained  their  kindly  feeling  for  France, 
and,  as  the  most  glaring  wrongs  were  perpetrated  by  the 
vast  sea-power  of  England,  they  became  convinced  in 
time  of  the  expediency  of  declaring  war  against  the  lat 
ter.  The  Southwest  was  possibly  even  more  strongly 
in  favor  of  this  course  than  the  rest  of  the  country  and 
was  soon  full  of  what  the  English  sympathizers  in  the 
East  called  "  War-hawks."  To  this  class  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  Benton  belonged. 

He  has  himself  given  a  slight  view  of  some  events  of 
that  time  in  which  he  was  concerned.  Jackson  was  a 
major-general  of  militia  in  Tennessee  and  Benton  his 
aide-de-camp:  and  it  seems  that  in  the  winter  of  1812, 
some  months  before  war  was  declared,  Benton  and  other 
friends  of  the  future  victor  at  New  Orleans  had  in  view 
his  appointment  to  important  command  in  the  event  of 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities.  Benton's  account  of  the  mat 
ter  is  involved  in  some  confusion  as  to  dates,*  but  there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  its  general  accuracy.  He  said  in  a 
speech  in  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1855,  upon  the 
presentation  of  Jackson's  sword  to  Congress : 

"  I  was  young  then,  and  one  of  his  aids,  and  believed  in  his 
military  talents  and  patriotism,  greatly  attached  to  him,  and  was 
grieved  and  vexed  to  see  him  passed  by  when  so  much  incompe 
tence  was  preferred.  Besides,  I  was  to  go  with  him,  and  his  ap 
pointment  would  be  partly  my  own.  I  was  vexed,  as  were  all  his 
friends,  but  I  did  not  despair  as  most  of  them  did.  I  turned  from 
the  government  to  ourselves — to  our  own  resources,  and  looked  for 
the  chapter  of  accidents  to  turn  up  a  chance  for  incidental  em- 

*  See  Parton's  Jackson,  i.,  p.  364.  My  account  of  all  these  mat 
ters  is  taken  from  ibid.,  pp.  361-86.  See  also  View,  i.,  p.  738.  Ben- 
ton's  speech  is  to  be  found  in  C  G.,  33d  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  947-48. 


THE    WAR    OF    1812  67 

ployment,  confident  that  he  could  do  the  rest  for  himself,  if  he 
could  only  get  a  start.  I  was  in  this  mood  in  my  office,  a  young 
lawyer  with  more  books  than  briefs,  when  the  tardy  mail  of  that 
time,  one  '  raw  and  gusty  day'  in  February,  1812,  brought  an  act 
of  Congress  authorizing  the  President  to  accept  organized  bodies 
of  volunteers  to  the  extent  of  fifty  thousand — to  serve  for  one 
year,  and  to  be  called  into  service  when  some  emergency  should 
require  it. 

"  Here  was  a  chance.  I  knew  that  Jackson  could  raise  a  gen 
eral's  command,  and  trusted  to  events  for  him  to  be  called  out,  and 
felt  that  one  year  was  more  than  enough  for  him  to  prove  him 
self.  I  drew  up  a  plan,  rode  thirty  miles  to  his  house  that  same 
raw  day  in  February — rain,  hail,  sleet,  wind — and  such  roads  as 
we  then  had  there  in  winter — deep  in  rich  mud  and  mixed  with  ice. 
I  arrived  at  the  Hermitage — a  name  then  but  little  known — at 
nightfall,  and  found  him  solitary,  and  almost  alone,  but  not  quite, 
for  it  was  the  evening  mentioned  in  the  '  Thirty  Years'  View,' 
when  I  found  him  with  the  lamb  and  the  child  between  his  knees. 
I  laid  the  plan  before  him.  He  was  struck  with  it,  adopted  it, 
acted  upon  it.  We  began  to  raise  volunteer  companies. 

"  While  this  was  going  on,  an  order  arrived  from  the  War 
Department  to  the  governor  (Willie  Blount)  to  detach  fifteen  hun 
dred  militia  to  the  Lower  Mississippi,  the  object  to  meet  the  British, 
then  expected  to  make  an  attempt  on  New  Orleans.  The  governor 
was  a  friend  to  Jackson  and  to  his  country.  He  agreed  to  accept 
his  three  thousand  volunteers  instead  of  the  fifteen  hundred  drafted 
militia.  He  issued  an  address  to  his  division.  I  galloped  to  the 
muster-grounds  and  harangued  the  young  men.  The  success  was 
ample.  Three  regiments  were  completed — Coffee,  William  Hall, 
Benton,  the  colonels." 

It  was  owing  to  the  existence  of  this  command  of 
troops  that  Jackson  was  able,  a  very  few  days  after  the 
ne\vs  of  the  declaration  of  war  reached  Nashville,  to 
offer  to  the  President  on  June  25  the  services  of  twenty- 
five  hundred  volunteers.  The  authorities  at  Washington 
were  naturally  much  pleased  at  the  promptitude  with 
which  this  tender  reached  them  and  accepted  it  with 
alacrity,  but  some  months  elapsed  before  the  young  vol 
unteers  took  the  field.  After  Hull's  failure  in  Canada, 
however,  fears  for  New  Orleans  seem  to  have  been  enter- 


68         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

tained,  and  on  October  21  the  governor  of  Tennessee 
was  requested  to  send  fifteen  hundred  troops  to  the  aid 
of  General  Wilkinson,  who  was  in  command  at  that 
city,  and  by  November  Jackson  was  actively  making 
ready  to  have  his  troops  fill  this  requisition.  On  Novem 
ber  14  the  General  issued  the  following  address  to  his 
troops,  which  Benton  says  he  had  suggested  to  Jackson 
and  had  himself  written  almost  entirely : 

"  In  publishing  the  letter  of  Governor  Blount,  the  Major-Gen 
eral  makes  known  to  the  valiant  volunteers  who  have  tendered  their 
services  everything  which  is  necessary  for  them  at  this  time  to  know. 
In  requesting  the  officers  of  the  respective  companies  to  meet  in 
Nashville,  on  the  21  st  inst,  the  governor  expects  to  have  the  bene 
fit  of  their  advice  in  recommending  the  field-officers,  who  are  to 
be  selected  from  among  the  officers  who  have  already  volunteered; 
also  to  fix  upon  the  time  when  the  expedition  shall  move,  to  deliver 
the  definite  instructions,  and  to  commission  the  officers  in  the  name 
of  the  President  of  the  United  States.  Companies  which  do  not 
contain  sixty-six  rank  and  file  are  required  to  complete  their  com 
plement  to  that  number.  A  second  lieutenant  should  be  added 
where  the  company  contains  but  one. 

"  The  Major-General  has  now  arrived  at  a  crisis  when  he  can 
address  the  volunteers  with  the  feelings  of  a  soldier.  The  State  to 
which  he  belongs  is  now  to  act  a  part  in  the  honorable  contest  of 
securing  the  rights  and  liberties  of  a  great  and  rising  republic.  In 
placing  before  the  volunteers  the  illustrious  actions  of  their  fathers 
in  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  he  presumes  to  hope  that  they  will 
not  prove  themselves  a  degenerate  race,  nor  suffer  it  to  be  said 
that  they  are  unworthy  of  the  blessing  which  the  blood  of  so  many 
thousand  heroes  has  purchased  for  them.  The  theater  on  which 
they  are  required  to  act  is  interesting  to  them  in  every  point  of 
view.  Every  man  of  the  Western  country  turns  his  eyes  intuitively 
upon  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  He  there  beholds  the  only  out 
let  by  which  his  produce  can  reach  the  markets  of  foreign  nations 
or  of  the  Atlantic  States.  Blocked  up,  all  the  fruits  of  his  industry 
rot  upon  his  hands;  open,  and  he  carries  on  a  commerce  with  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth.  To  the  people  of  the  Western  country  is 
then  peculiarly  committed,  by  nature  herself,  the  defense  of  the 
lower  Mississippi  and  the  city  of  New  Orleans.  At  the  approach 
of  an  enemy  in  that  quarter  the  whole  Western  world  should  pour 
forth  its  sons  to  meet  the  invader  and  drive  him  back  into  the  sea. 


THE    WAR   OF    1812  69 

Brave  volunteers !  it  is  to  the  defense  of  this  place,  so  interesting  to 
you,  that  you  are  now  ordered  to  repair.  Let  us  show  ourselves 
conscious  of  the  honor  and  importance  of  the  charge  which  has  been 
committed  to  us.  By  the  alacrity  with  which  we  obey  the  orders 
of  the  President  let  us  demonstrate  to  our  brothers  in  all  parts  of 
the  Union  that  the  people  of  Tennessee  are  worthy  of  being  called 
to  the  defense  of  the  republic." 

The  men  were  ordered  to  rendezvous  at  Nashville  on 
December  10,  and  were  to  arm  themselves  with  their  own 
rifles  and  many  other  equipments,  for  which,  they  were 
told,  compensation  might  confidently  be  expected  to  be 
made  by  the  government. 

As  to  their  uniform,  Jackson  informed  them  as  fol 
lows  :  "  Dark  blue  or  brown  has  been  prescribed  for 
service,  of  homespun  or  not,  at  the  election  of  the  wearer ; 
hunting-shirts  or  coats,  at  the  option  of  the  different 
companies,  with  pantaloons  and  dark-colored  socks. 
White  pantaloons,  vests,  etc.,  may  be  worn  upon  parade. 
As  the  expedition  will  not  terminate  under  five  or  six 
months,  and  will  include  the  winter  and  spring,  the  vol 
unteers  \vill  see  the  propriety  of  adapting  their  clothing 
in  quantity  and  quality  to  both  seasons.  The  field  offi 
cers  will  wear  the  uniform  which  is  prescribed  for  officers 
of  the  same  grade  in  the  army  of  the  United  States. 
Company  officers  will  conform  to  the  same  regulations,  if 
convenient ;  otherwise,  they  will  conform  to  the  uniform 
of  their  companies." 

The  day  appointed  for  the  troops  to  assemble  was 
unusually  cold  and  there  was  deep  snow  on  the  ground, 
but  none  the  less  two  thousand  of  the  men  arrived  on 
time  and  camped  out  as  best  they  could.  The  command 
consisted  of  one  regiment  of  cavalry  under  Colonel 
Coffee,  and  numbering  six  hundred  and  fifty  men,  and  of 
two  regiments  of  infantry,  containing  fourteen  hundred 
men  in  all  and  commanded  by  Colonels  Hall  and  Benton. 
In  the  latter's  regiment  Sam  Houston  was  a  corporal. 


70         LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

They  got  off  from  Nashville  on  January  7,  the  infan 
try  going  aboard  boats  which  were  to  float  down  the 
Cumberland  to  the  Ohio,  then  down  it  to  the  Mississippi, 
and  so  to  New  Orleans.  On  the  eve  of  parting  Jackson 
wrote  to  the  Secretary  of  War :  "I  have  the  pleasure  to 
inform  you  that  I  am  now  at  the  head  of  2070  volunteers, 
the  choicest  of  our  citizens,  who  go  at  the  call  of  their 
country  to  execute  the  will  of  the  government,  who  have 
no  constitutional  scruples ;  and  if  the  government  orders, 
will  rejoice  at  the  opportunity  of  placing  the  American 
eagle  on  the  ramparts  of  Mobile,  Pensacola,  and  Fort 
St.  Augustine,  effectually  banishing  from  the  Southern 
coasts  all  British  influence." 

It  may  be  assumed  that  this  plan  did  not  greatly 
exceed  the  hopes  of  the  small  army  as  to  the  service 
ahead  of  them,  nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  a  moderate 
degree  of  training  would  soon  have  made  of  them  a 
terrible  engine  of  war.  Composed  of  planters'  sons, 
business  men,  and  in  general  a  very  high  class  for  the 
rank  and  file  of  an  army,  there  was  absolutely  none  of  the 
dregs  of  a  large  city,  and  every  unit  had  been  trained 
from  infancy  to  a  self-reliant  life  in  the  open  air  and 
felt  that  he  was  a  citizen  of  equal  rights  in  a  republic  of 
vast  promise. 

The  movements  of  the  little  army  were  so  much 
quicker  than  those  of  the  officials  that  New  Orleans  was 
by  no  means  ready  to  receive  them,  and  they  had  to  be 
stopped  at  Natchez.  Here  they  went  into  camp,  appar 
ently  about  the  middle  of  February,  and  Jackson's 
amazement  can  be  imagined  when  one  Sunday  near  the 
end  of  March,  an  express  from  the  Secretary  of  War  at 
Washington  reached  the  camp,  carrying  an  order  dated 
February  6,  which  ordered  the  disbandment  of  the  com 
mand. 

The  reason  given  was  that  the  causes  requiring  the 
army  had  ceased  to  exist,  and  the  order  was  a  dismissal 


THE    WAR    OF    1812  71 

at  once  and  there.  They  were  five  hundred  miles  from 
home,  had  no  means  to  get  back,  and  Jackson  at  once 
determined  to  disobey  orders  and  hold  his  command 
together  until  he  could  get  the  men  safely  home.  He 
sent  for  Benton,  showed  him  the  order,  told  him  what 
he  meant  to  do,  and  then  himself  assumed  the  financial 
risk  of  bringing  his  small  army  home  again.  Jackson 
wrote  a  very  severe  letter  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  which 
Benton  vainly  tried  to  get  him  to  soften,  and  then  all 
energies  were  bent  to  the  task  of  securing  the  necessary 
supplies.  The  merchants  of  Natchez  aided  greatly  by 
offering  such  stores  as  they  had  and  agreeing  to  accept 
payment  later,  wagons  were  impressed  to  carry  baggage 
and  the  sick,  and  at  length,  on  May  22,  the  last  of  the 
army  was  disbanded  at  Nashville. 

The  Secretary  of  War  explained  later  that  he 
thought  his  order  would  certainly  reach  Jackson  before 
he  was  far  from  home,  but  the  consequences  of  the  blun 
der  would  have  been  most  serious  had  not  Jackson 
assumed  the  responsibility  he  did  assume.  He  was  of 
course  unable  to  meet  the  notes  he  had  given  for  supplies, 
as  they  fell  due,  and  they  all  went  to  protest.  Suit  was, 
however,  delayed,  until  an  application  for  relief  could  be 
made  at  Washington,  and  of  this  application  Benton, 
wrho  was  going  to  Washington  on  a  matter  of  his  own, 
gladly  took  charge.  He  applied  to  the  members  of  Con 
gress  from  Tennessee  and  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  but 
for  a  long  time  could  accomplish  nothing.  Years  after 
wards  he  told  as  follows  *  the  story  of  his  experiences 
and  final  success  in  this  matter : 

"  Weeks  had  passed  away,  and  the  time  for  delay  was  expiring 
at  Nashville.  Ruin  seemed  to  be  hovering  over  the  head  of  Jack 
son,  and  I  felt  the  necessity  of  some  decisive  movement.  I  was 
young  then  and  had  some  material  in  me — perhaps  some  boldness; 

*  Speech  on  presentation  of  Jackson's  sword,  ante. 


72         LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

and  the  occasion  brought  it  out.  I  resolved  to  take  a  step,  charac 
terized  in  the  letter  which  I  wrote  to  the  General  as  'an  appeal 
from  the  justice  to  the  fears  of  the  administration.'  I  remember 
the  words,  though  I  have  never  seen  the  letter  since.  I  drew  up 
a  memoir,  addressed  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  representing  to  him 
that  these  volunteers  were  drawn  from  the  bosoms  of  almost  every 
substantial  family  in  Tennessee — that  the  whole  State  stood  by 
Jackson  in  bringing  them  home — and  that  the  State  would  be  lost 
to  the  administration  if  he  was  left  to  suffer.  It  was  upon  this  last 
argument  that  I  relied — all  those  founded  in  justice  having  failed. 

"  It  was  of  a  Saturday  morning,  I2th  of  June,  that  I  carried 
this  memoir  to  the  War  Office,  and  delivered  it.  Monday  morn 
ing  I  came  back  early  to  learn  the  result  of  my  argument.  The 
Secretary  was  not  yet  in.  I  spoke  to  the  chief  clerk  (who  was  after 
wards  Adjutant  General  Parker),  and  inquired  if  the  Secretary 
had  left  any  answer  for  me  before  he  left  the  office  on  Saturday. 
He  said  no;  but  that  he  had  put  the  memoir  in  his  side  pocket — 
the  breast-pocket — and  carried  it  home  with  him,  saying  he  would 
take  it  for  his  Sunday's  consideration.  That  encouraged  me — gave 
a  gleam  of  hope  and  a  feeling  of  satisfaction.  I  thought  it  a  good 
subject  for  his  Sunday's  meditation.  Presently  he  arrived.  I 
stepped  in  before  anybody  to  his  office. 

"  He  told  me  quickly  and  kindly  that  there  was  much  reason  in 
what  I  had  said,  but  that  there  was  no  way  for  him  to  do  it;  that 
Congress  would  have  to  give  the  relief.  I  answered  him  that  I 
thought  there  was  a  way  for  him  to  do  it;  it  was  to  give  an  order 
to  General  Wilkinson,  quartermaster-general  in  the  Southern  depart 
ment,  to  pay  for  so  much  transportation  as  General  Jackson's  com 
mand  would  have  been  entitled  to  if  it  had  returned  under  regular 
orders.  Upon  the  instant  he  took  up  a  pen,  wrote  down  the  very 
words  I  had  spoken,  directed  a  clerk  to  put  them  into  form ;  and 
the  work  was  done.  The  order  went  off  immediately,  and  Jackson 
was  relieved  from  imminent  impending  ruin,  and  Tennessee  re 
mained  firm  to  the  administration." 


CHAPTER    VI 

QUARREL     WITH     JACKSON — DEEPLY     IMPRESSED     WITH 

THE    MISSISSIPPI    AND    THE    WEST REMOVAL    TO    ST. 

LOUIS 

WHILE  Benton  was  thus  far  away  in  Washington 
looking  after  a  matter  of  vital  interest  to  Jackson,  a  storm 
was  brewing  at  Nashville  in  which  the  former  had  no 
original  part  but  in  which  he  soon  became  concerned, 
with  the  result  that  he  was  upon  his  return  home  involved 
in  a  desperate  encounter  with  Jackson  which  absolutely 
broke  up  the  friendship  subsisting  for  some  years  between 
them. 

This  grew  out  of  a  duel  between  one  William  Carroll 
and  Benton's  brother,  Jesse,  in  which  Jackson  acted  as 
second  for  Carroll.  The  latter  was  not  a  Tennesseean 
but  had  come  from  Pittsburg,  and,  having  some  knowl 
edge  of  military  affairs,  had  been  advanced  rapidly  by 
Jackson  during  the  expedition  to  Natchez.  Carroll's 
view  was  that  this  advancement  made  others  jealous  of 
him  and  led  them  to  endeavor  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  him. 
Parton  says  *  that  he  had  declined  two  challenges,  on  the 
ground  that  the  challengers  were  not  gentlemen;  but 
finally  his  enemies  succeeded  in  embroiling  him  with  Jesse 
Benton,  whose  social  standing  was  such  that  it  was  not 
possible  to  decline.  Carroll  then  found  trouble  in  securing 
a  suitable  second  and  asked  Jackson  to  act.  The  latter 
objected  at  first  that  he  was  too  old,  though  "  the  time 
had  been  when  he  should  have  gone  out  with  pleasure" : 

*  Parton's  Jackson,  i.,  p.  387,  et  seq.     My  account  of  the  whole 

matter  is  largely  taken  from  Parton. 

73 


74         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

but  Carroll  told  him  it  was  no  ordinary  case  and  that 
there  was  a  conspiracy  to  "  run  him  out  of  the  country/' 
and  the  mere  suggestion  that  an  effort  was  making  to 
hound  down  a  friend  of  his  so  fired  Jackson's  impulsive 
nature  that  he  then  accepted  at  once. 

He  accordingly  made  inquiry  into  the  matter,  first 
with  a  view  to  stopping  the  duel,  and  thought  at  one 
time  he  had  prevailed  upon  the  challenger  to  see  that  none 
was  necessary :  but  the  latter  finally  insisted,  and  a  meet 
ing  was  held,  at  which  Jackson  acted  as  the  second  of 
Carroll.  Jesse  Benton  must  have  been  a  bad  shot,  for 
Jackson  assured  Carroll  that  his  opponent  could  not  hit 
him,  if  he  were  "  as  broad  as  a  barn-door."  When  the 
word  to  fire  was  given,  Benton  fired  first  and  slightly 
wounded  his  opponent  in  the  thumb.  Then  he  is  said  to 
have  stooped  or  crouched  to  receive  the  fire  of  Carroll, 
thus  bringing  into  prominence  a  part  of  the  body  which 
is  not  supposed  to  be  wounded  in  duels,  and  Carroll's 
bullet  inflicted  a  long  and  raking  wound  on  this  exposed 
portion. 

So  the  duel  in  this  matter  ended,  but  the  rather 
ludicrous  nature  of  Jesse  Benton's  wound  became  a  sub 
ject  of  joke  in  Tennessee,  and  was,  it  may  be  suspected 
from  the  sequel,  commented  on  by  Jackson.  Owing  to 
this  or  some  like  cause,  the  original  duel  soon  turned  out 
to  be  but  a  prelude  to  the  much  more  serious  affray  which 
grew  out  of  it. 

Thomas  Benton  was  at  the  time  in  Washington  and 
had  succeeded  in  accomplishing  the  relief  of  Jackson,  as 
already  narrated,  when  he  heard  of  the  duel,  and  was 
astonished  and  outraged  to  hear  that  Jackson  had  gone 
to  the  field,  not  as  Jesse's  friend,  but  as  the  second  of  the 
other  side.  Wild  letters  are  said  to  have  reached  Thomas 
from  Jesse,  who  was  as  hot-tempered  and  irascible  as  his 
brother  without  his  ballast,  and  in  these  Jackson's  con 
duct  was  put  in  a  very  bad  light.  Others  seem  to  have 


QUARREL    WITH   JACKSON  75 

carried  like  tales  to  Thomas,  who  then  soon  wrote  a  letter 
to  Jackson,  denouncing  his  conduct  in  offensive  terms. 
Jackson  replied  that,  before  so  addressing  him,  Benton 
should  have  inquired  of  him  as  to  the  truth  of  the  matter ; 
but  the  latter  grew  more  and  more  furious  and  charged 
that  Jackson  had  conducted  the  duel  in  a  4<  savage, 
unequal,  unfair  and  base  manner." 

As  Benton  returned  on  his  long  journey  to  Nashville, 
he  is  said  to  have  inveighed  bitterly  and  loudly  in  public 
places  against  Jackson,  using,  Parton  says,  "  language 
such  as  angry  men  did  use  in  the  Western  country"  at 
that  date,  and  all  this  of  course  reached  Jackson's  ears 
from  one  source  or  another.  Benton  had  no  doubt  cause 
to  be  angry  that  his  friend  had  taken  part  in  a  duel 
against  his  brother,  particularly  while  he  was  himself 
away  engaged  in  a  difficult  act  of  kindness  for  that  same 
friend,  and  he  evidently  thought  that  the  duel  had  been 
conducted  on  Jackson's  part  in  some  improper  way,  the 
details  of  which  I  have  not  ascertained. 

But  in  addition  to  this  the  relations  between  the  two 
had  already  suffered  a  strain,  and  probably  they  were 
both  to  some  extent  ripe  for  a  quarrel.  During  the 
Natchez  expedition  a  question  of  rank  had  been  dis 
cussed,  whether  or  not  Jackson,  a  major-general  of  mil 
itia,  was  the  superior  of  Wilkinson,  who  then  commanded 
at  New  Orleans  and  who  was  a  brigadier-general  in  the 
regular  army  and  a  major-general  by  brevet.  This 
question  did  not  arise  by  any  actual  clash  of  authority 
between  the  two  ambitious  leaders,  but  it  might  undoubt 
edly  have  done  so  at  any  time ;  and  during  the  discussions 
Benton  gave  his  opinion — apparently  in  some  formal  way 
— that  Wilkinson  was  the  superior  officer. 

This  must  have  been  a  serious  offence  in  the  eyes 
of  Jackson,  whose  nature  it  was  to  expect  his  friends 
always  to  support  him  and  to  take  the  same  view  in  im 
portant  matters  relating  to  himself  as  he  did.  To  this 


76         LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

difference  of  opinion  Benton  thought  that  much  of  Jack 
son's  ire  against  him  owed  its  origin. 

The  quarrel  was  evidently  brewing  for  a  long  time 
before  it  finally  broke  out,  and  Jackson  swore  publicly 
in  his  favorite  oath — "  by  the  Eternal" — that  he  would 
horsewhip  Tom  Benton  the  first  time  he  met  him.  All 
Nashville  must  have  known  of  this  sacred  promise,  and 
no  doubt  Benton  was  informed  of  it  before  his  arrival. 
He  seems  not  to  have  sought  the  contest,  though  quite 
ready  for  it,  and  upon  arriving  at  Nashville,  on  the  morn 
ing  of  September  4,  went  with  his  brother  Jesse  to  the 
City  Hotel,  instead  of  the  Nashville  Inn,  to  which  he 
was  in  the  habit  of  going  with  Jackson's  friends. 

The  evening  of  the  day  before  Jackson  had  ridden 
into  Nashville  from  the  Hermitage,  doubtless  with  the 
design  of  carrying  out  his  intentions  upon  the  person 
of  Benton,  and  had  gone  with  his  friend  General  Coffee 
to  his  accustomed  lodging-place,  the  Nashville  Inn.  On 
the  morning  of  the  4th,  he  and  Coffee  walked  over 
to  the  post-office,  Jackson  carrying  a  riding-whip,  and 
wearing  also  a  small  sword,  as  was  then  much  the  cus 
tom  in  Tennessee.  They  went  diagonally  across  an  open 
lot,  thus  passing  behind  the  City  Hotel,  where,  according 
to  Parton,  they  saw  Benton  standing  in  the  doorway 
drawn  up  to  his  full  height  and  looking  daggers  at  them. 
After  they  got  their  letters,  they  proceeded  to  return, 
but  this  time  went  by  the  street  and  would  thus  pass 
directly  in  front  of  the  hotel  where  they  had  just  seen 
Benton.  As  they  came  up  to  where  the  latter  was  stand 
ing,  Parton's  story  is  that  Jackson  suddenly  turned  upon 
him  and  said,  "  Now,  you  d — d  rascal,  I  am  going  to 
punish  you.  Defend  yourself." 

Then  began  a  melee  in  which  some  six  or  eight  people 
were  engaged,  without  considering  those  who  finally 
separated  the  combatants,  and  it  is  naturally  impossible 
to  ascertain  the  details  of  the  matter.  Parton  gives  an 


QUARREL    WITH    JACKSON  77 

account  which  he  received  from  some  one  who  had  heard 
Coffee  tell  the  story  of  the  fracas,  while  the  account  of 
Benton  published  a  few  days  after  the  encounter  differs 
in  some  particulars  from  that  of  Coffee.  But  these  dif 
ferences  do  not  seem  to  me  material. 

The  main  facts  are  that  Jackson  was  the  first  to  draw 
a  pistol  and  that  Benton  was  stepping  backward  before 
the  point  of  this  weapon,  when  Jesse  Benton  fired  at 
Jackson,  and  about  the  same  time  Thomas  Benton  and 
Jackson  fired  at  each  other  and  Jackson  fell  badly 
wounded  and  entirely  hors  du  combat.  It  was  apparently 
Jesse's  shot  that  wounded  Jackson.  Then  Coffee  rushed 
in  and  shot  at  Thomas  Benton,  but  the  pistol  missing  fire 
or  he  missing  his  aim,  he  clubbed  his  pistol  and  was 
advancing  on  Benton,  when  the  latter  (according  to 
Coffee)  retreating  slowly  fell  backward  down  a  stairway 
in  the  hotel,  of  the  existence  of  which  he  had  not  known. 
Jesse  Benton  was  also  attacked,  and  was  wounded  by 
one  or  more  of  the  Jackson  party.  But,  whatever  the 
details  may  have  been,  the  result  was  undoubtedly  a 
triumph  for  the  Bentons.  Jackson  had  to  be  carried 
away,  severely  wrounded,  and  the  scene  of  the  encounter 
was  left  in  possession  of  the  Bentons. 

And  they  used  their  triumph  in  true  borderland  style. 
Remaining  upon  the  field  of  battle,  they  not  only  de 
nounced  Jackson  as  a  defeated  assassin  and  loudly  defied 
him  to  come  out  and  renew  the  strife,  but  Colonel  Benton 
in  a  conspicuous  way  in  the  public  square  broke  Jackson's 
small  sword,  which  had  been  dropped  in  the  struggle,  and 
thundered  out  in  the  loudest  tones  defiant  and  contempt 
uous  words  as  to  his  opponent. 

A  few  days  after  the  encounter,  Benton  had  printed 
the  following  account  *  of  the  event,  which  he  probably 
sent  to  his  friends: 


*  One  of  the  originals  of  this  circular  letter,  addressed  to  Gen. 
John  Sevier  in  Knoxville,  is  preserved  in  the  Tennessee  Historical 


78         LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  FRANKLIN,  TENNESSEE,  September  10,  1813. 

"  A  difference  which  had  been  for  some  months  brewing  be 
tween  General  Jackson  and  myself  produced,  on  Saturday,  the  4th 
instant,  in  the  town  of  Nashville,  the  most  outrageous  affray  ever 
witnessed  in  a  civilized  country.  In  communicating  the  affair  to 
my  friends  and  fellow-citizens,  I  limit  myself  to  the  statement  of 
a  few  leading  facts,  the  truth  of  which  I  am  ready  to  establish  by 
judicial  proofs. 

"  I.  That  myself  and  my  brother,  Jesse  Benton,  arriving  in  Nash 
ville  on  the  morning  of  the  affray,  and  knowing  of  General  Jack 
son's  threats,  went  and  took  lodgings  in  a  different  house  from  the 
one  in  which  he  staid,  on  purpose  to  avoid  him. 

"2.  That  the  General  and  some  of  his  friends  came  to  the 
house  where  we  had  put  up,  and  commenced  the  attack  by  levelling 
a  pistol  at  me,  when  I  had  no  weapon  drawn,  and  advancing  upon 
me  at  a  quick  pace,  without  giving  me  time  to  draw  one. 

"3.  That  seeing  tm's,  my  brother  fired  upon  General  Jackson, 
when  he  had  got  within  eight  or  ten  feet  of  me. 

"4.  That  four  other  pistols  were  fired  in  quick  succession; 
one  by  General  Jackson  at  me ;  two  by  me  at  the  General ;  and 
one  by  Colonel  Coffee  at  me.  In  the  course  of  this  firing,  General 
Jackson  was  brought  to  the  ground,  but  I  received  no  hurt. 

"  5.  That  daggers  were  then  drawn.  Colonel  Coffee  and  Mr. 
Alexander  Donaldson  made  at  me,  and  gave  me  five  slight  wounds. 
Captain  Hammond  and  Mr.  Stokely  Hays  engaged  my  brother, 
who,  still  suffering  from  a  severe  wound  he  had  lately  received  in 
a  duel,  was  not  able  to  resist  two  men.  They  got  him  down ;  and 
while  Captain  Hammond  beat  him  on  the  head  to  make  him  lie 
still,  Mr.  Hays  attempted  to  stab  him,  and  wounded  him  in  both 
arms  as  he  lay  on  his  back,  parrying  the  thrusts  with  his  naked 
hands.  From  this  situation  a  generous-hearted  citizen  of  Nashville, 
Mr.  Sumner,  relieved  him.  Before  he  came  to  the  ground,  my 
brother  clapped  a  pistol  to  the  breast  of  Mr.  Hays,  to  blow  him 
through,  but  it  missed  fire. 

"6.  My  own  and  my  brother's  pistols  carried  two  balls  each; 
for  it  was  our  intention,  if  driven  to  arms,  to  have  no  child's  play. 
The  pistols  fired  at  me  were  so  near  that  the  blaze  of  the  muzzle 

Society,  and  the  letter  has  often  been  printed.     See,  e.g.,  Billon's 

Annals  of  St.  Louis,  1804-21,  pp.  409-11.     By  some  typographical 

error,  Parton  (Life  of  Jackson,  i.,  pp.  397-98)  prints  it  without 
the  "  I"  near  the  end  of  clause  4,  thus  making  Benton  guilty  of 
a  strange  assertion.  The  "  I"  is  in  the  original. 


QUARREL    WITH    JACKSON  79 

of  one  of  them  burnt  the  sleeve  of  my  coat,  and  the  other  aimed  at 
my  head  at  a  little  more  than  arm's  length  from  it. 

"  7.  Captain  Carroll  was  to  have  taken  part  in  the  affray,  but 
was  absent  by  the  permission  of  General  Jackson,  as  he  had  proved 
by  the  General's  certificate,  a  certificate  which  reflects  I  know  not 
whether  less  honor  upon  the  General  or  upon  the  Captain. 

"  8.  That  this  attack  was  made  upon  me  in  the  house  where  the 
judge  of  the  district,  Mr.  Searcy,  had  his  lodgings!  Nor  has  the 
civil  authority  yet  taken  cognizance  of  this  horrible  outrage. 

"  These  facts  are  sufficient  to  fix  the  public  opinion.  For  my 
own  part,  I  think  it  scandalous  that  such  things  should  take  place 
at  any  time ;  but  particularly  so  at  the  present  moment,  when  the 
public  service  requires  the  aid  of  all  its  citizens.  As  for  the  name 
of  courage,  God  forbid  that  I  should  ever  attempt  to  gain  it  by  be 
coming  a  bully.  Those  who  know  me,  know  full  well  that  I  would 
give  a  thousand  times  more  for  the  reputation  of  Croghan  *  in 
defending  his  post,  than  I  would  for  the  reputation  of  all  the  duel 
ists  and  gladiators  that  ever  appeared  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

"  THOMAS  HART  BENTON, 
"Lieut-Col.  39th  Infantry." 

It  is  evident  that,  immediately  after  the  encounter, 
Benton  found  a  veritable  hornet's  nest  about  his  ears  at 
Nashville.  Jackson  was  both  powerful  and  popular  in 
Tennessee,  and  his  friends  made  it  hot  for  the  Bentons. 
Thomas  wrote  from  that  place  a  few  days  afterwards ; 

"  I  am  literally  in  hell  here,  the  meanest  wretches  under  heaven 
to  contend  with — liars,  affidavit-makers,  and  shameless  cowards.  All 
the  puppies  of  Jackson  are  at  work  on  me,  but  they  will  be  aston 
ished  at  what  will  happen ;  for  it  is  not  them,  but  their  master, 
whom  I  will  hold  accountable.  The  scalping-knife  of  Tecumpsy 
is  mercy  compared  with  the  affidavits  of  these  villains.  I  am  in 
the  middle  of  hell,  and  see  no  alternative  but  to  kill  or  be  killed ; 
for  I  will  not  crouch  to  Jackson;  and  the  fact  that  I  and  my 

*  Early  in  August,  1813,  Major  George  Croghan.  a  young  officer 
of  twenty-two  years  of  age,  had  made  a  memorable  defence  of  Fort 
Stephenson  on  the  Sandusky  River.  He  had  but  one  gun  and  one 
hundred  and  sixty  men  under  him,  but  successfully  resisted  the 
assaults  made  for  two  days  by  General  Proctor  with  five  hundred 
regulars  and  seven  hundred  Indians. 


8o          LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

brother  defeated  him  and  his  tribe,  and  broke  his  small  sword  in 
the  public  square,  will  for  ever  rankle  in  his  bosom,  and  make  him 
thirst  after  vengeance.  My  life  is  in  danger;  nothing  but  a  de 
cisive  duel  can  save  me,  or  even  give  me  a  chance  for  my  own 
existence;  for  it  is  a  settled  plan  to  turn  out  puppy  after  puppy 
to  bully  me,  and  when  I  have  got  into  a  scrape,  to  have  me  killed 
somehow  in  the  scuffle,  and  afterwards  the  affidavit-makers  will 
prove  it  was  honorably  done.  I  shall  never  be  forgiven  having 
given  my  opinion  in  favor  of  Wilkinson's  authority  last  winter ; 
and  this  is  the  root  of  the  hell  that  is  now  turned  loose  against 
me." 

It  has  been  said  that  Benton's  visit  to  Washington, 
after  the  return  of  the  Natchez  expedition  in  the  spring 
of  1813,  had  been  primarily  on  a  matter  of  his  own.  His 
purpose  was  to  apply  for  a  commission  in  the  army,  and 
he  was  appointed  by  Madison  lieutenant-colonel  in  the 
Thirty-ninth  Infantry  on  the  i8th  of  June,  1813.  He 
said,  many  years  later,  that  this  was  the  only  position  he 
ever  in  all  his  long  career  asked  a  President  to  confer 
on  himself  or  any  relative.  But  it  seems  that  he  saw  no 
active  military  service  after  this  date,  and  indeed  for  at 
least  two  years  after  his  appointment  to  the  army  almost 
nothing  of  him  is  known.  He  is  often  said  to  have  served 
for  a  time  on  the  Canada  frontier,  but  he  himself  writes 
in  his  autobiographical  sketch  that,  when  he  was  in 
1814-15  "proceeding  to  Canada,  where  he  had  obtained 
service,  he  met  the  news  of  peace;  and  desiring  no  ser 
vice  in  time  of  peace,  he  was  within  a  few  months  on  the 
west  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  St.  Louis  his  home."  He 
was  honorably  discharged  from  the  army  on  June  15, 
1815. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  quarrel  with  Jack 
son  was  a  most  serious  event  for  him.  Jackson  was  a 
leading  man  in  Tennessee  before  the  war,  and  the  victory 
at  New  Orleans  raised  his  popularity  and  power  to  such 
mountain-height  that  there  could  hardly  have  been  any 
possibility  for  Benton  to  succeed  in  Tennessee.  No  doubt 


QUARREL    WITH    JACKSON  3i 

this  was  a  strong  influence  leading  to  his  removal,  and 
some  of  his  opponents  assert  broadly  that  he  was  driven 
out  of  Nashville. 

But  there  was  another  motive.  Mrs.  Fremont  writes 
that,  during  the  expedition  to  Natchez,  he  had  been  most 
deeply  impressed  by  the  imperial  Mississippi,  and  that 
there  had  been  forced  upon  his  mind — theretofore,  she 
thinks,  not  yet  opened  to  any  comprehension  of  the  future 
of  the  far  West — the  realization  that  the  waters  of  that 
great  river  drained  the  region  which  was  destined  before 
the  lapse  of  many  years  to  control  the  United  States. 
Probably  some  profound  impression  was  made  upon  him 
about  that  time,  as  he  gazed  upon  the  immense  and  silent 
sweep  of  its  waters,  and  all  his  life  through  he  would 
ordinarily  refer  to  it  under  such  names  as  "  the  King  of 
Floods"  or  "  the  Father  of  Waters." 

We  do  not  to-day  look  upon  a  great  navigable  river 
in  the  same  way  that  our  grandfathers  did ;  on  the  con 
trary,  we  view  it  with  the  eyes  of  criticism,  and  are  quite 
set  against  it  for  such  a  small  vice  as  being  muddy; 
while  to  our  grandfathers  even  the  most  turbid  stream 
was  a  dear  friend  to  which  they  were  ever  deeply  beholden 
as  the  only  known  way  to  transport  the  bulk  of  their  food 
and  all  their  heavy  traffic.  Naturally,  therefore,  the 
sweeping  current  of  the  Mississippi  aroused  in  the  mind 
of  Benton  thoughts  of  the  vast  commerce  which  would 
some  day  be  borne  on  its  surface,  and  from  these  thoughts 
it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  how  he  reached  the  con 
clusion  to  cast  his  lot  with  the  people  of  that  region.  It 
is  very  possible,  too,  that  he  had  already  some  knowledge 
of  St.  Louis  and  its  prosperity  derived  from  travellers 
during  the  expedition  to  Natchez. 

The  date  of  his  removal  to  his  new  home  is  variously 
given  by  different  writers  as  1815,  1816,  and  1817,  but 
it  seems  clear  from  a  letter  of  his  in  1819  as  well  as  from 
his  autobiography  that  he  first  went  there  some  time 

6 


82          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

in  1815.  In  the  winter  of  1817  he  returned  to  Nashville 
and  removed  his  mother  to  St.  Louis,  and  here  we  may 
possibly  find  the  explanation  of  the  contradictory  state 
ments  as  to  the  date  of  his  removal.* 


*  Billon's  Annals  of  St.  Louis,  1804-21,  p.  162.  John  F.  Darby's 
Personal  Recollections,  p.  180.  Mrs.  Fremont's  Sketch.  Letter  to 
Governor  Preston,  dated  November  14,  1819,  and  quoted  near  the 
end  of  the  next  chapter,  in  which  he  writes  of  being  comfortably 
established  "  in  four  years."  Letter  to  same,  dated  May  17,  1817, 
and  also  quoted  near  the  end  of  the  next  chapter.  In  his  address 
in  the  Senate  in  the  Benton  Statue  Proceedings  Senator  Vest  says 
that  Benton  first  settled  in  Missouri  at  the  old  French  village  of 
St.  Genevieve,  some  thirty-five  miles  below  St.  Louis,  on  the  Mis 
sissippi  River,  and  he  adds  that  he  himself  had  seen  there  "  the 
law  office,  built  of  cypress  logs,  in  which  he  [Benton]  practised 
his  profession  and  from  which  you  could  look  out  across  the 
broad  expanse  of  the  Father  of  Waters.  He  remained  in  St.  Gene 
vieve  only  a  few  years."  I  know  of  no  other  evidence  to  this 
effect,  and  Benton's  own  statement  in  his  autobiography  quoted 
shortly  above  seems  hardly  consistent  with  it. 


CHAPTER     VII 

EARLY  ST.  LOUIS EDITS  THE  ST.   LOUIS  ENQUIRER ORE 
GON  AND  THE  FAR   WEST THE  ROAD  TO  INDIA THE 

ENGLISH  CONVENTION  OF  l8l8 THE  FLORIDA  TREATY 

LETTERS 

THE  settlement  of  St.  Louis  was  begun  in  1764  under 
the  French,  and  was  one  of  those  movements  of  mixed 
adventure  and  money-seeking  which  have  had  so  large  a 
part  in  the  conquest  of  wild  lands.  In  1762  M.  d'Abadie, 
the  Director-General  and  Commandant  of  Louisiana, 
granted  to  a  company,  in  which  Pierre  Laclede  (or 
Pierre  Laclede  Liguest,  as  his  real  name  was)  was  a 
leading  character,  the  exclusive  right  to  trade  with  the 
savages  of  the  Missouri  and  all  nations  west  of  the 
Mississippi  for  eight  years. 

Laclede  and  his  friends  gathered  together  the  necessary 
goods  and  started  north  from  New  Orleans  in  August, 
1763.  They  stored  their  goods  later,  and  then  Laclede 
set  off  to  go  farther  up  the  river  with  a  young  man 
named  Auguste  Chouteau  to  seek  a  suitable  place  on  the 
west  bank  as  a  base  for  their  operations.  Laclede  was 
delighted  with  the  site  where  St.  Louis  has  since  grown, 
at  once  fixed  upon  it,  and  a  few  months  after  their  return 
young  Chouteau  started  off  again  with  his  brother  Pierre 
and  a  party  of  thirty  men  to  establish  themselves  at  the 
spot  which  Laclede  had  selected.  They  arrived  there, 
and  landed  on  February  15,  1764,  at  what  has  since  be 
come  the  foot  of  Walnut  Street  in  a  city  of  nearly  six 
hundred  thousand  inhabitants. 

In  the  spring  Laclede  joined  them  and  named  the 
place  after  Louis  XV.,  in  entire  ignorance  of  the  fact 

83 


84          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

that  that  French  king  no  longer  held  sway  over  the 
region  and  that  they  were  all  subjects  of  Spain.  The 
settlement  was  shortly  afterwards  in  much  alarm  from 
the  Indians  and  did  not  grow  rapidly  until  some  years 
after  it  came  under  American  control.  In  1808  the  Mis 
souri  Fur  Company  was  founded  and  did  some  business 
in  furs,  and  there  is  said  to  have  been  quite  an  inrush  of 
immigrants  just  before  the  War  of  1812.  That  war, 
however,  stopped  this  for  the  time,  but  with  peace  in 
1815  immigrants  began  once  more  to  arrive.  The  popu 
lation  of  the  city  proper  is  said  to  have  been  one  thou 
sand  in  1810  and  three  thousand  five  hundred  in  1818, 
and  in  the  latter  year  one  hundred  new  houses  were 
built. 

Entirely  French  in  its  early  days,  it  retained  for  many 
years  traces  of  its  origin;  but  the  restless,  inpouring 
Americans  before  long  got  the  mastery  over  the  docile 
descendants  of  the  French,  and  then  quickly  brought  the 
region  under  Anglo-Saxon  civilization.  The  formerly 
controlling  element  had  by  no  means  rejoiced  at  their 
bodily  transfer  in  1804  to  the  American  government,  and 
many  of  them  sighed  all  through  life  for  the  good  old 
days  when  they  were  subjects  of  France  or  Spain. 

It  is  said  that  for  years  the  older  French  people  scorned 
to  learn  English,  and  would  say  proudly,  "  Je  suis  franc^ais 
de  France  et  je  parle  ma  langue;"  and  the  horrid  inno 
vations  which  the  Americans  introduced  were  a  source  of 
detestation  to  the  kindly  but  weak  people  who  had  con 
trolled  the  region.  Darby  writes  that,  when  he  went 
there  as  a  boy  in  1818,  the  harness  they  used  on  their  little 
Canadian  horses  was  most  roughly  and  clumsily  patched 
together  with  leather  straps  and  buckskin  thongs,  and 
that  the  wheels  of  their  wagons  were  made  entirely  of 
wood,  without  any  iron  tire;  so  that,  when  a  few  years 
later  the  Americans  paved  some  of  the  streets,  the 
French  element  complained  bitterly  and  said  that  the 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  85 

new-comers  had  put  rocks  in  the  streets  and  broken  their 
cart-wheels. 

They  used,  too,  for  their  oxen,  instead  of  a  yoke,  a 
cross-piece  of  wood,  tied  to  the  horns  by  straps,  so  that 
the  animal  pulled  by  the  head — just  such  as  may  still  be 
seen  in  some  Latin  countries;  and  another  sight  of  like 
origin  was  that  of  men  carrying  buckets  of  water  sus 
pended  by  long  strips  of  wood  from  a  wooden  yoke  fitting 
around  the  neck.* 

The  streets  were  narrow  and  dirty,  and  in  1818  not  a 
single  one  was  paved.  There  were  three  principal  ones 
parallel  to  the  river, — Main  Street,  Church  Street, — lately 
Rue  de  1'Eglise, — and  Barn  Street.  Main  Street  was 
pretty  compactly  built  and  was  the  site  of  the  fine  resi 
dences  as  well  as  the  business  centre  of  the  town,  while 
the  other  streets  contained  fewer  buildings. 

The  houses  were  generally  whitewashed  and,  with  the 
exception  of  two  or  three  aristocratic  establishments, 
were  mean,  frail,  and  uncomfortable ;  those  belonging  to 
the  richer  people  were  generally  of  stone,  and  there  were 
but  very  few  brick  ones :  some  of  frame  or  log  still  sur 
vived,  with  the  logs  planted  perpendicularly  in  the  ground, 
instead  of  horizontally,  as  was  the  American  custom. 

The  finer  houses  were  most  substantial.  That  of  Col 
onel  Auguste  Chouteau  occupied  a  whole  block  or  square, 
fronting  on  Main  Street,  and  was  surrounded  by  a  solid 
stone  wall  two  feet  thick  and  ten  feet  high,  with  port 
holes  through  which  to  shoot  Indians  in  case  of  attack. 
The  stone  walls  of  the  house  were  also  two  feet  and  a 
half  thick,  and  the  building  was  two  stories  high  and 

*  Fragment  of  Colonel  Auguste  Chouteau's  Narrative  of  Set 
tlement  of  St.  Louis.  Reavis's  St.  Louis,  the  Future  Great  City  of 
the  World,  p.  152,  quoting  a  city  directory  of  1821.  Darby  (Per 
sonal  Recollections,  p.  5)  says  that  the  population  in  1818  was  about 
two  thousand.  Mrs.  Fremont's  sketch  of  her  father  in  John  C 
Fremont's  Memoirs  of  mv  Life. 


86         LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

surrounded  by  a  large  piazza  supported  by  pillars.  The 
inside  was  elegantly  furnished,  but,  like  all  St.  Louis 
houses  at  that  time,  was  entirely  without  carpet:  the 
floors,  instead,  were  made  of  black  walnut  and  were  kept 
brilliantly  polished  with  wax  by  the  daily  labor  of  some  of 
the  large  train  of  servants.  Major  Pierre  Chouteau  had 
another  similar  establishment  occupying  a  whole  block.* 

The  prevailing  language  to  be  heard  in  the  streets  was 
still  French,  and  all  the  negroes  spoke  it  as  their  mother- 
tongue.  Darby  estimates  that  in  1818  the  French  still 
composed  two-thirds  of  the  population,  and  they  evidently 
gave  the  tone  to  the  place  at  that  time. 

They  were  a  light-hearted  people,  like  those  of  the 
race  from  whose  loins  they  had  sprung,  and  it  is  said 
that  there  was  a  riddle  in  every  house  and  a  dance  some 
where  every  night.  Enjoying  life  with  a  freshness  quite 
foreign  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  giving  but  little 
thought  to  the  morrow,  they  seem  to  have  lived  easy 
and  happy  lives,  and  were  honest  and  confiding;  but 
they  lacked  entirely  the  audacity  and  the  masterful  push 
which  characterized  the  Americans  and  which  enabled 
the  latter  in  the  course  of  a  very  few  years  to  control 
not  only  St.  Louis  but  a  vastly  greater  stretch  of  territory 
than  the  French  had  brought  under  their  dominion  in 
half  a  century. 

The  first  American  lawyers  who  moved  to  the  section 
found  themselves  unable  to  practise  because  of  their  en 
tire  ignorance  of  the  civil  law,  which  then  prevailed 
throughout  upper  Louisiana,  but  this  difficulty  was  soon 
overcome.  In  1812  Congress  changed  the  name  to  the 
Missouri  Territory,  and  the  Legislature  chosen  in  pur- 


*  Darby's  Personal  Recollections,  from  which  my  facts  in  re 
gard  to  early  St.  Louis  are  largely  taken.  See  also  Timothy  Flint's 
History  and  Geography  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  Cincinnati,  1832, 
p.  306. 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  87 

suance  of  the  authorization  of  Congress  passed  a  law  in 
1816  establishing  the  common  law  of  England  as  the 
basis  of  their  system.  The  grand  jury,  too,  was  soon 
introduced,  and  the  fundamental  principles  of  American 
self-government  rapidly  replaced  the  former  paternal 
system,  to  the  immense  disgust  of  the  French  people. 

Darby  gives  an  interesting  account  of  his  experiences 
when  he  was  taken  as  a  boy  in  1818  from  North  Carolina 
to  St.  Louis.  His  father  made  the  long  journey  by  land, 
taking  his  family  and  all  he  owned  with  him.  The  mother 
rode  in  a  gig,  while  a  large  covered  wagon,  drawn  by 
five  horses,  carried  the  bulk  of  their  possessions.  They 
took,  too,  quite  a  stock  of  negroes,  and  drove  from  Ken 
tucky  a  goodly  number  of  cattle,  hogs,  and  sheep. 

Arriving  at  the  east  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  opposite 
St.  Louis,  apparently  in  November  or  December,  the 
boy's  fancy  was  much  struck  by  the  rushing  current  of 
the  river,  which  seemed  to  be  boiling  up  from  the  bottom 
and  was  in  places  turbid  and  muddy.  They  were  ferried 
across  in  a  small  keel-boat,  entirely  manned  by  French 
men,  who  were  clothed  in  strange  habiliments  and  who 
astounded  the  new-comers  by  their  volubility  in  another 
language.  But  they  were  stout  and  capable  oarsmen  and 
left  a  vivid  impression  on  this  boy's  mind  of  the  energy 
with  which  they  labored  at  the  oars,  each  man  doing  his 
utmost  and  bringing  every  muscle  into  play.  It  took  three 
days  to  complete  the  ferriage,  and  the  cost  of  the  transfer 
was  about  fifty  dollars. 

How  Benton  made  the  journey  to  St.  Louis  is  not 
known,  but  we  do  know  that  he  crossed  the  Mississippi 
to  his  new  home  one  Sunday  evening,  with  four  hundred 
dollars  in  his  pocket,  and  knowing  not  a  soul  in  St.  Louis. 
He  had  to  begin  there  by  learning  a  new  system  of  law, 
and  even  the  chief  language  of  the  place  was  unknown 
to  him  so  far  as  speaking  it  was  concerned. 

He  was  doubtless  for  some  time  after  his  arrival  en- 


88         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

gaged  in  efforts  to  obtain  a  foothold  at  the  bar  and  in 
affairs  generally,  but  I  have  not  ascertained  who  were 
his  principal  aids.  General  William  Clark  may  well  have 
been  one.  He  was  then  and  had  been  since  1813  the  gov 
ernor  of  the  Territory,  and  was  famous  as  one  of  the 
leaders  with  Meriwether  Lewis  in  the  first  overland 
expedition  to  the  Pacific,  and  he  was  a  connection  of 
Benton's  future  wife.  Benton  had,  I  think,  by  this  time 
met  the  latter,  through  a  friendship  with  James  P.  Pres 
ton,  of  Virginia,  which  he  had  made  in  the  army,  and  it 
is  not  unlikely  that  he  took  with  him  letters  to  Clark 
from  Preston. 

His  first  connection  with  public  life  in  his  new  home,  so 
far  as  I  have  found,  was  in  1817,  when  he  was  appointed 
a  member  of  the  first  board  of  school  trustees,  from  whose 
action  the  Missouri  system  of  public  education  derived  its 
origin.  He  was  on  this  board  with  William  Clark,  Wil 
liam  C.  Carr,  Bernard  Pratte,  Auguste  Chouteau,  Alex 
ander  McNair,  and  John  P.  Cabanne,  several  of  whom 
were  leading  men  and  very  valuable  acquaintances.  He 
wrote  also  for  the  press,  and  in  1819  became  one  of  the 
editors  and  then  or  later  part  owner  of  a  newspaper. 

This  journal  had  existed  for  some  few  years,  but  about 
that  time  came  into  the  ownership  of  Isaac  N.  Henry,  of 
Nashville.  Its  name  was  changed  to  the  St.  Louis  En 
quirer,  and  it  was  issued  every  Wednesday  and  Saturday 
at  the  price  of  five  dollars  per  annum,  payable  in  advance. 
Advertisements  of  fifteen  lines  were  inserted  once  for  a 
dollar,  and  subsequent  insertions  were  made  for  fifty 
cents.  It  advertised  the  laws  of  the  United  States  by 
authority,  contained  notices  from  New  York  papers  of 
"  The  Sketch  Book  of  Geoffrey  Crayon,"  of  "  Madame 
Riedesel's  Narrative/'  and  other  works,  and  showed — as 
is  well  worthy  of  note — a  decided  dislike  for  banks. 

Not  only  does  it  evince  its  own  feeling  of  this  sort,  but 
quotes  numbers  of  like  articles  from  other  papers,  in  one 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  89 

of  which  a  writer  in  Niles's  Register  says  of  the  bank  of 
the  United  States  that  "  being  soulless  [it]  cannot  feel 
shame."  The  Enquirer  was  considered  by  Darby  to  be 
still  Benton's  "  mouth-piece  and  organ"  as  late  as  1823. 

There  are  not  many  details  to  be  found  as  to  his  suc 
cess  at  the  bar,  but  he  evidently  had  a  large  practice  in 
St.  Louis.  Bay  thinks  that  he  was  retained  in  several 
important  land  suits,  but  paid  "  more  attention  to  poli 
tics  than  to  law."  But  Timothy  Flint,  who  spent  long 
periods  on  the  Mississippi  waters,  wrote  that  after  the 
death  of  Edward  Hempstead,  "  Colonel  Benton,  well 
known  in  another  place,  has  since  been  supreme  at  the 
bar.  He  is  acute,  laboured,  florid,  rather  sophomorical, 
to  use  our  word,  but  a  man  of  strong  sense.  There  flashes 
'  strange  fire'  from  his  eye,  and  all  that  he  does  '  smells 
of  the  lamp.' ' 

Upon  his  election  to  the  Senate  it  is  said  that  he 
called  his  clients  together  and  gave  up  all  his  land  cases 
on  the  ground  that  his  connection  with  them  might  con 
flict  with  his  duties  as  a  Senator.  He  refused  even  to 
name  any  lawryer  to  take  charge  of  the  cases.  I  do  not 
think  that  he  ever  practised  law  to  any  extent  after 
this.* 

*  Reavis's  St.  Louis  the  Future  Great  City,  etc.,  third  edition, 
appendix,  p.  149.  Billon's  Annals  of  St.  Louis  in  Territorial  Days, 
p.  105.  An  imperfect  volume  of  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer,  beginning 
with  the  number  for  September  i,  1819,  and  ending  with  that  of 
August  30,  1820,  is  preserved  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society, 
in  St.  Louis.  Benton's  name  does  not  appear  in  the  paper,  which 
purports  to  be  issued  by  "  Isaac  N.  Henry  and  Co.,"  and  speaks  of 
its  editors  in  the  plural.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  of  his 
connection  with  it.  J.  Q.  Adams  says  in  his  Memoirs  (v.,  p.  327) 
that  Benton  was  half  owner.  John  F.  Darby's  Personal  Recollec 
tions,  p.  261.  Recollections  of  the  Last  Ten  Years  passed  in  Occa 
sional  Residences  and  Journeyings  in  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi, 
by  Timothy  Flint,  Boston,  1826,  p.  184.  The  author  writes  of  "  E. 
H."  and  "  Col.  B.,"  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  who  are  referred  to. 
Senator  Elkins,  in  Benton  Statue  Proceedings. 


90         LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

At  the  time  of  Benton's  removal  St.  Louis  was  close 
to  the  border  of  civilization,  but  to  the  west  and  northwest 
stretched  a  boundless  region  of  vast  promise  to  the  eye 
that  could  foresee.  There  was  trade  communication  by 
armed  caravan  to  far-off  Mexico  and  even  to  the  Gulf 
of  California,  or  "  Sea  of  Cortez;"  and  a  few  adventurous 
lovers  of  solitude  travelled  across  the  Rocky  Mountains 
down  to  Oregon  and  the  Pacific  Ocean.  But  it  was 
mainly  the  hardy  voyageurs  and  trappers  after  furs  who 
penetrated  into  this  immense  wild  region,  and  to  the 
American  people  generally  it  was  a  sealed  book. 

Benton's  interest  in  it  either  existed  already  or  was 
aroused  soon  after  his  arrival  at  St.  Louis,  and  he  eagerly 
sought  information  from  many  a  hunter  and  trapper  and 
voyageur,  as  they  came  back  to  civilization  from  their  long 
and  solitary  trips.  From  them,  from  Clark,  and  from 
missionary  priests  he  acquired  a  remarkable  knowledge  of 
the  region  at  a  time  when  it  was  an  unbroken  wilderness, 
and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  throughout  the  rest  of  his 
career  he  had  a  far  more  accurate  acquaintance  with  the 
territory  of  the  United  States  west  of  the  Mississippi 
River  than  any  man  living.  Profoundly  inspired  at  this 
early  day  with  the  vast  development  which  he  clearly 
foresaw  for  it,  he  studied  its  climates  and  watercourses 
and  vast  ranges  of  mountains,  and  planned  its  division 
into  States  and  Territories,  when  our  public  men  hardly 
knew  the  region  existed  and  were  absolutely  indifferent  to 
its  future. 

He  certainly  showed  in  this  matter  not  only  unusual 
knowledge,  but  profound  statesmanship  as  well,  for  he 
foresaw  years  ahead  all  the  main  outlines  of  the  future 
division  and  the  principles  on  which  it  should  be  made. 
At  the  time  when  the  Missourians  were  moving  for  ad 
mission  into  the  Union  there  was  some  dispute  as  to  what 
land  should  be  included  in  the  intended  State,  some  want 
ing  to  divide  it  by  the  Missouri  River.  Benton  opposed 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  91 

this  strongly,  and  said  that  the  river  ought  to  be  in  the 
middle;  and  in  an  article  in  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer  of 
September  25,  1819,  gave  his  ideas  as  to  the  division  of 
the  vast  region  in  a  way  which  seems  to  me  wonderfully 
near  to  what  has  actually  taken  place.  He  wrote : 

"  With  respect  to  the  number  and  form  of  the  States  to  be  laid 
off  west  of  the  Mississippi,  a  long  and  laborious  application  to  the 
study  of  the  face  of  the  country,  has  brought  us  to  this  result: 
Three  States  to  border  the  Mississippi ;  one  on  the  Arkansas, 
taking  that  river  for  the  centre;  one  on  the  Missouri,  taking  it 
for  the  centre;  one  on  the  St.  Pierre,*  it  also  being  in  its  centre: 
each  running  back  about  three  hundred  miles.  This  would  take  in 
all  the  woodland  which  borders  on  the  Mississippi.  Other  States 
should  afterwards  be  formed  in  the  rear,  or  above  these,  on  the 
Arkansas,  the  Missouri,  the  Kansas,  the  Platte,  the  Yellow  Stone, 
always  taking  a  river  for  the  centre  of  a  State.  By  this  means  the 
centres  of  the  States  would  always  be  in  the  part  of  the  country 
which  admitted  of  population,  agriculture,  and  commerce,  that  is 
to  say  on  the  borders  of  the  rivers  where  wood  is  found ;  and  the 
extremes  or  ends  of  the  States  would  be  in  the  vast  plains  found 
between  the  rivers,  and  uninhabitable  for  want  of  wood  and  water. 
Such  a  system  would  line  the  banks  of  the  Missouri  and  other 
great  rivers  with  a  succession  of  great  cities,  capitals  of  States, 
rising  above  one  another  from  the  centre  of  the  valley  of  the  Mis 
sissippi  to  the  foot  of  the  Shining  Mountains." 

An  important  step  in  the  history  of  this  great  Western 
region,  and  particularly  of  Oregon,  took  place  in  1818. 
The  settlement  which  John  Jacob  Astor  had  made  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  in  1811,  and  had  called  As 
toria,  was  captured  by  the  British  during  the  War  of  1812, 
but  was  in  1818  again  delivered  to  American  possession  in 
pursuance  of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent.  The  British,  however, 

*  The  Minnesota  or  St.  Peter's  River,  which  flows  through 
rather  the  lower  part  of  Minnesota.  Iowa  was  not  foreseen  by 
Benton  as  a  separate  State,  and  the  area  now  composing  it  was  in 
cluded  by  him  in  the  southern  part  of  Minnesota  and  probably  the 
northern  part  of  Missouri. 


92          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

had  set  up  a  claim  to  rights  on  the  northwestern  coast, 
and  a  convention  was  made  with  them  in  this  same  year 
for  the  joint  occupation  of  the  whole  region  for  ten  years 
and  saving  the  claims  of  both  nations. 

This  treaty  Benton  at  once  opposed  and  published  let 
ters  against  in  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer,  contending  that  the 
British  would  infallibly  secure  the  control  of  the  territory 
through  their  fur  companies  and  the  powerful  aid  they 
gave  them,  and  that  at  the  lapse  of  the  ten  years  the  whole 
region  would  be  in  their  actual  possession  and  we  be  left 
to  prove  our  mere  right  as  best  we  could.  The  following 
extracts  from  these  letters  will  be  of  interest : 

THE   TREATY    WITH    ENGLAND. 

"It  is  time  that  western  men  had  some  share  in  the  destinies 
of  this  Republic,  was  the  sentiment  expressed  by  this  paper  on  see 
ing  that  Mr.  Adams  had  proposed  to  dismember  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi  in  behalf  of  the  King  of  Spain.  That  sentiment  recurs 
with  great  force  on  reading  the  treaty  lately  made  by  Mr.  Gallatin 
on  the  part  of  the  United  States  with  the  King  of  Great  Britain. 
By  this  treaty  or  convention,  the  right  of  navigating  the  Columbia 
River  for  ten  years  is  granted  to  the  British  fur  companies.  .  .  . 
The  convention  gives  a  joint  right  of  occupying  the  ports  and  har 
bors,  and  of  navigating  the  rivers  of  each  other.  This  would  imply 
that  each  government  possessed  in  that  quarter,  ports,  and  harbors, 
and  navigable  rivers;  and  were  about  to  bring  them  into  hotch 
potch  for  mutual  enjoyment.  No  such  thing.  There  is  but  one 
port,  and  that  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia — but  one  river,  and  that 
the  Columbia  itself:  and  both  port  and  river  our  own.  We  give 
the  equal  use  of  these  to  the  British,  and  receive  nothing  in  return. 
The  convention  says  that  the  '  claim'  of  neither  party  is  to  be 
prejudiced  by  the  joint  possession.  This  admits  that  Great  Britain 
has  a  claim — a  thing  never  admitted  by  us,  nor  pretended  by  her. 
At  Ghent  she  stated  no  claim,  and  could  state  none.  Her  ministers 
merely  asked  for  the  river  as  a  boundary,  as  being  the  most  con 
venient,  and  for  the  use  of  the  harbor  at  its  mouth,  as  being  neces 
sary  to  their  ships  and  trade ;  but  stated  no  claim.  Our  commis 
sioners  reported  that  they  (the  British  commissioners)  endeavored 
'  to  lay  a  nest-egg'  for  a  future  pretension ;  which  they  failed  to 
do  at  Ghent  in  1815,  but  succeeded  in  laying  in  London  in  1818; 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  93 

and  before  the  ten  years  are  out,  a  full  grown  fighting  chicken  will 
be  hatched  of  that  egg.  There  is  no  mutuality  in  any  thing.  We 
furnish  the  whole  stake— country,  river,  harbor ;  and  shall  not  even 
maintain  the  joint  use  of  our  own.  We  shall  be  driven  out  of  it, 
and  the  British  remain  sole  possessors.  The  fur  trade  is  the  object. 
It  will  fare  with  our  traders  on  the  Columbia  under  this  convention 
as  it  fared  with  them  on  the  Miami  of  the  Lakes  (and  on  the  lakes 
themselves)  under  the  British  treaties  of  '94  and  '96,  which  admitted 
British  traders  into  our  territories.  Our  traders  will  be  driven  out ; 
and  that  by  the  fair  competition  of  trade,  even  if  there  should  be  no 
foul  play.  The  difference  between  free  and  dutied  goods,  would 
work  that  result.  The  British  traders  pay  no  duties ;  ours  pay  above 
an  average  of  fifty  per  centum.  No  trade  can  stand  against  such 
odds.  But  the  competition  will  not  be  fair.  The  savages  will  be 
incited  to  kill  and  rob  our  traders,  and  they  will  be  expelled  by 
violence,  without  waiting  the  slower,  but  equally  certain  process, 
of  expulsion  by  underselling:  .  .  .  and  at  the  end  of  the  ten  years 
[the  British]  will  have  an  admitted  'claim'  to  our  property,  and 
the  actual  possession  of  it."  * 

In  a  very  few  years  his  forecast  of  the  results  of  the 
treaty  was  largely  justified,  for  the  powerful  influence  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  began  at  once  to  lead  to  the 
absorption  of  the  region  by  the  British.  Fresh  from 
meeting  the  aggression  of  England  in  open  war,  Benton 
thus  soon  found  her  once  more  warring  upon  the  future 
greatness  of  the  American  republic;  and  here  was  an 
other  lesson  confirming  his  earlier  beliefs  and  rightly 
leading  him  to  look  with  suspicion  and  distrust  upon  Eng 
land  as  being  then  the  aggressive,  determined,  and  most 
dangerous  opponent  of  the  future  of  his  own  country. 

A  vast  influence  all  this  had  upon  him  throughout  his 
career,  and  his  daughter  thinks  that  he  soon  matured  the 
resolution,  which  he  so  long  pursued  and  finally  saw  tri 
umph,  to  terminate  the  joint  occupation,  to  hold  for  our- 

*  The  extracts  I  have  reproduced  are  from  two  of  the  letters, 
one  to  be  found  more  at  length  in  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p. 
637,  and  the  other  in  View,  i.,  pp.  109,  no. 


94          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

selves  the  port  on  the  Pacific,  and  thus  to  open  overland 
communication  with  Asia.  His  writings  show  that,  at 
least  as  early  as  1818,  he  was  deeply  impressed  with  the 
value  of  the  India  trade*  and  had  matured  plans  for 
directing  its  course  over  the  American  continent,  and  that 
he  clearly  foresaw,  moreover,  the  coming  settlement  of 
the  immense  region  to  the  northwest  as  far  as  the  Pacific. 

It  is  curious  to  read  f  that  a  good  many  years  earlier 
one  with  whom  Benton  presumably  associated  in  Ten 
nessee  foresaw  this  destined  march  of  American  institu 
tions.  Robertson,  the  founder  of  Nashville,  is  reported 
to  have  said  some  years  before  the  close  of  the  century, 
"  We  are  the  Advance  Guard  of  civilization  and  our 
march  is  across  the  continent." 

This  may  not  impossibly  have  had  its  influence  on 
Benton,  who  wrote  in  one  of  his  articles  jf.  in  the  St.  Louis 
Enquirer, "  The  disposition  which  '  the  children  of  Adam' 
have  always  shown  '  to  follow  the  sun'  has  never  discov 
ered  itself  more  strongly  than  at  present.  Europe  dis 
charges  her  inhabitants  upon  America;  America  pours 

*  This  belief  still  prevails,  and  the  President  (Sir  George  S. 
Robertson)  of  the  Geographical  Section  of  the  British  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science  said  in  his  address  at  the  meeting 
at  Bradford,  in  1900,  "  From  the  very  beginnings  of  the  great  com 
merce,  the  Eastern  trade  has  enriched  every  nation  which  obtained 
its  chief  share."  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  March,  1901. 

f  Edmund    Kirke's    Advance    Guard    of    Western    Civilization, 

p.  31- 

$  The  most  complete  reproduction  of  these  articles  of  Benton, 
both  on  the  Convention  with  England  and  on  the  Florida  Treaty, 
that  I  know  of  is  to  be  found  in  a  publication  from  the  office  of  The 
Missourian  in  St.  Louis  in  1844  of  "  Selections  from  editorial  arti 
cles  from  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer  on  the  subject  of  Oregon  and 
Texas  as  originally  published  in  that  paper  in  the  years  1818-19 ; 
and  written  by  the  Hon.  Thomas  H.  Benton,"  etc.  I  presume  this 
was  issued  byBenton's  friends  to  help  him  in  the  election  to  the 
Senate,  then  about  to  be  held.  A  copy  exists  in  the  Library  Com 
pany  of  Philadelphia. 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  95 

her  population  from  east  to  west.  ...  In  a  few  years 
the  Rocky  Mountains  will  be  passed,  and  '  the  children 
of  Adam'  will  have  completed  the  circumambulation  of 
the  globe,  by  marching  to  the  west  until  they  arrive  at 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  in  sight  of  the  eastern  shore  of  that 
Asia  in  which  their  first  parents  were  originally  planted." 

Already  at  that  early  day  in  our  history  some  few 
Americans  were  trying  to  stretch  out  and  obtain  a  share 
in  the  world's  trade,  and  Benton  was  among  the  most 
active  of  these.  His  paper  quotes  in  its  issue  of  Septem 
ber  i,  1819,  an  article  from  the  Nashville  Clarion,  in 
which  it  is  said,  "  The  road  to  the  East  Indies  lies  through 
the  Isthmus  of  Darien.  The  project  of  connecting  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  Oceans  will  be  renewed  tlie  moment 
that  Mexico  becomes  independent  or  falls  into  the  hands 
of  a  great  nation.  The  execution  of  that  project,  by 
saving  the  doubling  of  Cape  Horn  or  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  will  bring  the  East  Indies  several  thousand  miles 
nearer  to  New  Orleans  and  Philadelphia.  The  rich 
commerce  of  the  East  would  flow  by  our  doors." 

But  this  was  evidently  only  quoted  from  general  in 
terest  in  the  subject  and  \vas  not  Benton's  opinion,  for  in 
the  issue  of  September  25  of  the  same  year  he  printed  an 
article  of  his  own  *  advocating  an  entirely  different  route. 
He  traced  the  different  paths  which  the  commerce  of 
India  had  followed  in  history,  argued  its  immense  value, 
and  said  that  its  channels  "  may  be  traced  by  the  ruins 
of  the  great  cities  which  grew7  up  with  the  possession  of 
this  trade,  and  perished  with  its  loss." 

In  proposing  what  he  called  "  The  American  road  to 
India,"  he  said  that  Columbus  was  the  first  to  conceive  the 
idea  of  going  west  to  arrive  at  the  East  Indies :  La  Salle, 
too,  had  the  same  idea,  and  Jefferson  planned  to  find  a 

*  This  article  is  in  part  reproduced  by  Benton  as  an  appendix 
to  a  speech  in  Congress.  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  920,  921. 


96          LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

transcontinental  route  in  the  expedition  he  sent  out  under 
Lewis  and  Clark. 

"  What  was  the  EAST  Indies  to  the  ancients,"  wrote  Benton 
further,  "  are  the  WEST  Indies  to  the  Americans,  for  they  lie  to 
the  west  of  us  and  but  a  few  days'  sail  from  our  own  coast.  .  .  . 
The  rivers  Columbia,  Missouri,  and  Ohio,  form  this  line,  and  open 
a  channel  to  Asia,  short,  direct,  safe,  cheap,  and  exclusively  Ameri 
can.  .  .  .  The  ascent  of  the  Columbia  and  Clark's  river  [or  fork  of 
the  Columbia]  by  this  route  do  not  present  a  navigation  of  more 
than  a  thousand  miles,  of  which  nearly  two  hundred  is  tide-water 
and  deep  enough  for  merchant-ships  of  any  size ;  about  three  hun 
dred  is  fitted  for  boats  of  some  hundred  tons;  and  the  remainder 
for  small  vessels  of  thirty  or  forty  tons.  This  distance  is  not 
equal  to  the  length  of  the  Ohio  from  the  Mississippi  to  Pitts 
burgh,  and  though  interrupted  by  several  portages,  presents  in 
some  respects  a  better  navigation  than  the  Ohio,  being  free  from 
ice  during  the  winter,  and  retaining  its  water  and  common  depth 
much  better  during  summer.  .  .  .  An  American  ship  sails  nearly 
thirty  thousand  miles  in  a  voyage  from  the  Atlantic  States  to  the 
East  Indies.  .  .  .  The  new  route  would  be  shorter  by  twenty  thou 
sand  miles." 


There  was  an  enthusiasm  in  his  ideas  in  these  days, 
and  a  conviction  of  the  vast  development  of  his  country 
which  are  to-day  delightful  to  see  and  were  then  prophetic. 
It  was  probably  during  his  early  days  in  St.  Louis  that 
he  and  Governor  Clark  undertook  to  calculate  "  the  boat- 
able  waters  in  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi,"  and  made 
them  about  fifty  thousand  miles,  counting  of  course  "  all 
the  infant  streams  on  which  a  flat,  a  keel,  or  a  batteau, 
could  be  floated,  and  justly,  for  every  tributary  of  the 
humblest  boatable  character  helps  to  swell,  not  only  the 
volume  of  the  central  waters,  but  of  the  commerce  upon 
them."  And  as  early  as  1819  he  had  already  conceived 
the  idea  of  opening  a  water-way  to  connect  the  Missis 
sippi  and  the  Great  Lakes. 

When  in  1818  or  1819  a  commission  came  to  St. 
Louis  directed  by  the  Secretary  of  War  to  run  a  line  from 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  97 

the  southern  end  of  Lake  Michigan  to  the  Mississippi,  it 
was  Benton's  geographical  knowledge  that  led  him  to 
propose  to  them  "  to  examine  the  ground  between 
Chicago  and  the  head-waters  of  the  Illinois  River,  with 
a  view  to  the  construction  of  a  canal  by  the  federal  gov 
ernment."  They  accordingly  made  this  survey,  and  upon 
their  return  submitted  all  their  observations  to  him,  and 
he  it  was  who  actually  wrote  the  report  they  made  in 
favor  of  that  route  for  the  canal.  He  printed  the  report 
in  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer,  probably  in  April,  1819,  and 
supplemented  it  by  editorial  articles,  and  wrote  years  later 
that  it  "  was  probably  the  first  formal  communication, 
upon  authentic  data,  in  favor  of  the  Chicago  Canal. 
.  .  .  But  I  must  confess  I  did  not  foresee  then  what  I 
have  since  seen — the  Falls  of  Niagara  surmounted  by  a 
ship  canal,  and  a  schooner  clearing  from  Chicago  for 
Liverpool."  * 

If  the  value  of  the  Chicago  Canal  has  in  modern 
days  come  to  be  doubted,  no  one  can  question  the  vast 
importance  it  would  have  had  at  a  time  before  the  inven 
tion  of  railroads  and  when  all  freight  was  still  carried 
in  small  vessels.  And  it  was  certainly  an  original  and 
far-seeing  mind  which  could  conceive  so  bold  a  scheme  in 
the  year  1819  in  the  far-off  town  of  St.  Louis. 

It  was  Benton's  absolute  conviction  of  the  vast  de 
velopment  of  America  near  at  hand  that  led  him  to 
oppose  strongly  the  Spanish  treaty  of  1819,  by  which 

*  I  have  not  seen  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer  of  April,  1819.  The 
only  copy  of  the  paper  I  know  of  is  in  the  Missouri  Historical 
Society  and  begins  with  the  number  of  September  I.  All  the  facts 
set  forth,  however,  are  contained  in  a  letter  dated  June  20,  1847, 
from  Benton  to  the  committee  of  the  convention  held  in  Chicago 
in  that  year  to  promote  the  lake  and  river  navigation  of  the  West, 
and  printed  in  Henry  G.  Wheeler's  History  of  Congress,  ii.,  pp. 
415-418,  and  in  Niles's  Register  (July  17,  1847).  vol.  Ixxii.,  pp. 
309,  3io. 

7 


98         LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Spain  ceded  Florida  to  the  United  States  and  we  agreed 
that  our  southwestern  boundary  should  be,  roughly  speak 
ing,  the  Sabine,  the  Red  River,  and  the  Arkansas.  He 
wrote  letters  *  to  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer,  denouncing 
the  treaty  as  soon  as  the  basis  of  the  negotiations  was 
known  in  1818.  While  recognizing  the  acquisition  of 
Florida  as  desirable,  he  considered  it  certain  to  fall  to  us 
in  time,  and  was  bitterly  opposed  to  "  cutting  off  Texas" 
and  "  dismembering  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  .  .  . 
The  magnificent  valley  of  the  Mississippi,"  he  wrote,  "  is 
ours,  with  all  its  fountains,  springs,  and  floods;  and 
woe  to  the  statesman  who  shall  undertake  to  surrender 
one  drop  of  its  water,  one  inch  of  its  soil,  to  any  foreign 
power." 

To  Texas  he  evidently  considered  that  we  had  a  title, 
which  should  have  been  maintained.  He  had  watched 
closely  its  settlement  by  Americans,  and  knew  f  many  of 
the  emigrants  who  went  there.  His  newspaper  con 
tained  in  1819  various  items  of  Texas  news,  and  the  issue 
of  September  n  reported  their  great  indignation  upon 
finding  themselves  given  up  by  the  Spanish  Treaty,  and 
quoted  at  some  length  a  proclamation  by  James  Long, 
commander-in-chief,  and  the  "  Declaration  by  the  Su 
preme  Council  of  the  Republic  of  Texas."  This  latter 
recited  the  hopes  the  Texans  had  entertained  of  being 
included  in  the  American  Union,  and  said  that  their 
hope  had  prevented  any  effectual  effort  to  shake  off  the 
Spanish  yoke ;  but  went  on  that,  being  now  abandoned  by 
the  United  States,  they  disdained  to  become  a  prey  to 
Spain  and  therefore  declared  themselves  free. 


*  These  articles  are  referred  to  by  Benton  in  the  View,  i.,  pp. 
14-18,  and  again  in  a  speech  in  C  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  656. 
The  article  of  his  reproduced  at  the  latter  place  over  the  signature 
"  La  Salle"  is  dated  in  1829. 

t  View,  i.,  p.  674. 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  99 

Benton  did  not  want  to  demand  the  whole  of  what 
now  constitutes  Texas,  but  evidently  thought  that  a 
large  part  of  it  ought  to  have  been  insisted  upon,  and 
he  was  quite  ready  to  face  war  with  Spain  under  the 
conditions  then  existing.  He  wrote; 

"  On  the  subject  of  the  western  and  southern  boundaries  of 
Louisiana  we  should  be  willing  to  waive  the  pretensions,  in  some 
degree,  of  strict  right  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  not  by  way 
of  doing  a  pleasure  to  the  king  of  Spain,  whom  we  regard  as  noth 
ing,  but  for  the  purpose  of  yielding  an  agreeable  and  permanent 
boundary  to  our  future  ally,  the  Republic  of  Mexico.  To  them  we 
would  give  up  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  and  all  its  waters,  and 
would  take  to  ourselves  the  Buenaventura,*  and  all  the  waters 
which  fall  into  it.  ... 

"  [In  the  existing  state  of  the  negotiations  with  Spain]  the 
question  of  war  with  Spain  should  be  immediately  canvassed  in  all 
the  public  papers.  Pen  and  ink  politicians  may  take  fright  at  the 
sound  of  such  a  question,  but  to  us  it  seems  that  such  a  war  would 
be  the  most  happy  event  for  ourselves  and  for  the  human  race  that 
could  now  take  place.  It  would  give  the  Floridas  and  the  island  of 
Cuba,  with  the  Havannah,  to  the  United  States;  it  would  free  the 
new  from  the  old  world ;  and  it  would  create  a  cordon  of  republics 
across  the  two  continents  of  North  and  South  America, — boons 
for  which  the  present  generation  should  be  willing,  like  Curtius, 
to  leap  into  the  gulf. 

"  It  is  stated,  in  letters  from  Washington  City,  that  Mr.  Galla- 
tin  proposes  the  latitude  of  41°  for  the  northern  boundary  of  the 

*John  Melish's  Map  of  the  United  States  in  1820  has  a  river 
of  this  name  taking  its  origin  on  the  western  side  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  in  about  longitude  34°  west  from  Washington  and  be 
tween  latitudes  41°  and  42°,  and  flowing  westward  and  southward 
to  an  unnamed  lake  at  about  longitude  39°  and  between  latitudes 
37°  and  38°.  From  this  lake  to  the  westward  dotted  lines  are  drawn 
to  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco  and  are  marked  as  the  "  supposed 
course  of  a  river  between  the  Buenaventura  and  the  Bay  of  Fran 
cisco,  which  will  probably  be  the  communication  from  the  Arkan- 
saw  to  the  Pacific  Ocean."  Other  maps  represented  this  river,  as 
well  as  others  running  in  the  same  general  direction  and  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  more  positively,  and  without  the  dotted  lines  and 
note. 


ioo        LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

province  of  Louisiana,  giving  to  the  British  what  lies  to  the  north. 
Mr.  Adams  proposed  the  same  parallel  as  the  southern  boundary 
of  the  same  province,  giving  to  the  Spaniards  what  lies  to  the 
south.  In  the  hands  of  these  statesmen  the  map  of  Louisiana  is 
as  a  bit  of  cloth  between  the  trenchant  edges  of  a  pair  of  shears. 
It  is  time  that  Western  men  should  have  some  voice  in  the  des 
tinies  of  this  Republic." 

At  this  time  Benton  blamed  John  Quincy  Adams  as 
the  author  of  the  Spanish  treaty,  but  years  later  became 
convinced  of  his  error  as  to  this  and  openly  in  the  Sen 
ate  made  his  amends.  He  tells  at  some  length  in  the 
"  View"  how  mystified  he  was  as  to  the  real  cause  of  the 
enormous  sacrifice  of  territory,  and  especially  by  a  state 
ment  of  Adams  which  he  and  other  opponents  interpreted 
as  being  equivalent  to  saying  *  that  "  Spain  had  offered 
more  than  we  accepted."  He  soon  began  to  suspect  some 
connection  with  the  Missouri  controversy  then  raging, 
but  only  found  the  explanation  years  afterwards  in  a 
letter  from  Monroe  to  Jackson,  which  said  almost  in 
words  that  the  repugnance  of  some  of  the  leaders  in  the 
East  to  the  increasing  power  of  the  Southwest  was  the 
cause  which  led  the  administration  to  agree  to  the  boun 
dary  contained  in  the  treaty. 

Here  was  another  lesson  as  to  the  views  of  Eastern 
men  upon  the  development  of  the  Union,  which  of  course 

*  View,  i.,  p.  15,  etc.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  Adams 
did  not  admit  this  to  have  been  his  statement.  ''I  ...  now  recur 
to  it  [his  objections  in  1819  to  the  Florida  treaty],"  said  Benton, 
in  his  speech  in  secret  session  against  Tyler's  Annexation  Treaty, 
"  in  my  place  here  to  absolve  Mr.  Adams,  the  negotiator  of  the 
treaty  of  1819,  from  the  blame  which  I  then  cast  upon  him.  His 
responsible  statement  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
has  absolved  him  from  that  blame,  and  transferred  it  to  the  shoul 
ders  of  the  majority  of  Mr.  Monroe's  cabinet.  .  .  .  Southern  men 
deprived  us  of  Texas  and  made  it  non-slaveholding  in  1819."  C.  G., 
28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  483.  The  debates  upon  this 
treaty  were  almost  at  once  made  public. 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUlSf  .:5oi/ 

made  its  mark  upon  Benton.  He  writes  that  there  was 
not  a  paper  in  the  United  States  which  backed  his  essays,  ^ 
but  that  he  stood  it  without  flinching  and  was  charged 
with  being  an  opponent  of  Monroe.  He  had  to  meet 
this  objection  in  his  first  election  to  the  Senate,  and  found 
in  Washington  that  Monroe  looked  upon  him  as  an  op 
ponent. 

One  other  opinion  from  the  Enquirer  must  be  quoted 
here  to  show  his  early  opinions.  He  wrote  *  in  the  issue 
of  December  29,  1819,  that  there  are  "  three  objects 
which  American  statesmen  should  have  constantly  before 
their  eyes — (i)  the  acquisition  of  Cuba,  (2)  the  inde 
pendence  of  Mexico,  (3)  a  trade  to  India  by  the  Colum 
bia  and  the  Missouri  Rivers;"  and  even  earlier,  in  1810, 
he  had  in  the  Impartial  Review,  of  Nashville,  discussed  f 
Cuba  as  "  the  geographical  appurtenance  of  the  valley  of 
the  Mississippi  and  eventually  to  become  its  political 
appurtenance." 

While  in  the  army  he  had  grown  very  intimate  with 
Colonel  James  P.  Preston,  of  Virginia,  who  was  the 
uncle  of  Miss  McDowell,  whom  Benton  later  married, 
and  whom  it  is  probable  that  he  was  already  in  love  with, 
and  he  and  Preston  kept  up  more  or  less  correspondence 
after  their  separation.  The  following  letters  are  all  ad 
dressed  to  Colonel  Preston,  who  had  been  elected  gov 
ernor  of  Virginia  in  1816: 

"  ST.  Louis,  May  i7th,  1817. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR  : 

".  .  .  I  went  to  Tennessee  this  winter,  and  effected  the  removal 
of  my  mother  to  this  place.  She  arrived  a  few  days  since,  and  will 
spend  the  remainder  of  her  days  with  me.  .  .  ." 


*  This  article  is  signed  "  Americanus,"  which  Benton  later  said 
was  a  nom  dc  plume  used  by  him  at  this  time.  C.  G.,  28th  Cong., 
ist  Sess.,  p.  656. 

f  He  so  states  in  C.  G.,  33d  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  vol.  xxviii.,  part 

2> p- I233-  WlTffS/IF  Of 


itel ;  JLIFE :OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

"  NASHVILLE,  May  20th,   1818. 
"DEAR   SIR: 

"  I  send  you  under  another  cover  a  newspaper  of  St.  Louis, 
to  let  you  see  that  our  mutual  friend,  Gov.  Clark,  has  been  received 
with  public  honors,  upon  his  return  to  our  territory.  I  do  this 
because  some  wretches  have  spread  it  abroad  that  the  Governor 
was  unpopular  at  St.  Louis.  This  mark  of  public  respect  shown 
to  him  was  intended  as  a  silent  negative  to  that  idle  slander.  The 
measure  originated  in  my  office,  and  I  wrote  on  the  face  of  the  sub 
scription  paper  that  the  citizens  gave  the  dinner  in  honor  of  Gov. 
Clark,  that  the  mark  of  respect  should  be  unequivocal. 

"  I  am  only  here  for  a  few  days,  drawn  by  a  prospect  of  a 
treaty  with  the  Chicasaws  for  the  land  they  hold  in  the  west  end  of 
this  state,  and  where  I  have  a  large  interest.  I  consider  the  treaty 
made.  Jackson  will  have  the  land.  It  will  be  a  great  event  for 
the  U.  States  as  it  will  carry  the  warlike  population  of  Ken.  and 
Ten.  to  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  within  ten  or  twelve  days  sail 
of  New  Orleans,  and  will  give  to  that  place  the  means  of  a  prompt 
and  powerful  military  aid,  in  comparison  of  which  forts  and  gar 
risons  will  be  as  nothing. 

"  We  hear  but  little  from  the  Seminole  war.  The  officers  do 
not  write  many  letters  to  their  friends.  One  thing  is  certain  I 
believe,  they  cannot  find  the  thousands  of  Indians  which  filled  the 
newspapers  when  the  war  broke  out.  After  all,  if  this  petty  busi 
ness  leads  to  a  war  with  Spain,  I  shall  deem  it  an  event  of  the 
first  importance  for  the  human  race,  as  it  will  by  that  means  lead 
to  the  complete  emancipation  of  the  New  from  the  0/d  world.  .  .  ." 


"  ST.  Louis,  Nov.  i4th,  1819. 

"  MY  VERY   DEAR   FRIEND : 

".  .  .  Our  fine  country  here  is  becoming  a  New  Virginia.  Vast 
numbers  are  arriving  from  the  Parent  state;  but  it  would  not  seem 
like  Virginia  to  me  without  some  Preston's  in  it;  and  happily  our 
friend  William  Campbell  has  just  consummated  an  event  which 
determines  his  happiness,  and  fixes  his  fate  on  the  banks  of  the 
Missouri.  I  shall  hope  to  see  many  follow  him,  even  yourself,  at 
least  for  a  visit,  which  may  be  easily  made  with  the  help  of  steam 
boats,  now  swarming  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi,*  or  in  a  carriage 

*  The  steamboat  "  General  Pike"  was  the  first  to  ascend  the 
Mississippi  above  the  Ohio;  she  reached  St.  Louis  about  the  end  of 
July  or  beginning  of  August,  1817.  She  had  been  built  at  Render- 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    ST.  LOUIS  103 

which  would  find  in  our  prairies  plains  for  rolling  over,  more  beau 
tiful  and  extended  than  Asia  itself  could  boast. 

"  You  know  what  I  told  you  when  I  parted  from  you  in  that 
temple  dedicated  to  Felicity  on  the  summit  of  the  Allegheny,  that  I 
was  going  forth  as  an  adventurer  to  begin  on  a  new  theatre,  and  to 
endeavour  to  lay  with  my  own  hands  some  foundation  of  character 
and  fortune.  I  did  so.  I  crossed  the  Mississippi  on  a  Sunday  even 
ing,  four  hundred  dollars  in  my  pocket,  and  nobody  a  head  that  I 
had  ever  seen  before,  my  law  reading  to  revise  and  the  French  lan 
guage  to  learn.  Heaven  has  been  kind  to  me  for  it  has  given  me 
health  to  perform  in  my  office,  and  in  the  circle  of  my  wants,  the 
labors  of  a  galley  slave,  and  in  four  years  I  am  comfortably  estab 
lished.  If  I  had  brought  with  me  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  dollars, 
I  should  have  been  worth  to-day  from  a  quarter  to  half  a  million. 
For  I  had  seen  enough  of  the  world  to  see  things  as  they  were,  and 
as  they  would  be.  I  came  among  people  who  could  not  believe  it 
possible  that  ground  about  St.  Louis,  then  selling  for  thirty  dollars 
an  acre,  should  sell  at  this  day  for  two  thousand ;  but  I  did  believe, 
nay  knew  it,  and  daily  saw  splendid  fortunes  passing  in  review  be 
fore  me,  and  falling  into  the  hands  of  those  who  look  a  few  days 
ahead.  Nor  have  these  times  entirely  passed  away.  Our  country 
still  presents  the  finest  theatre  in  America.  Our  lands  are  yet  cheap, 
and  advance  in  price  while  sinking  everywhere  else.  Our  towns 
flourish  while  so  many  others  are  perishing.  Our  noble  rivers  are 
enlivened  with  commerce ;  and  the  tide  of  emigration  flows  in  upon 
us  with  a  force  and  steadiness  which  should  announce  to  the  old 
states  that  the  power  of  this  continent  is  gravitating  to  the  borders 
of  the  Mississippi.  Look  back  to  what  we  were  thirty  years  ago; 
see  what  we  are  to-day ;  tell  what  we  must  be  in  1830.  From  that 
day  the  West  will  give  the  law  to  the  Republic ;  and  those  who  have 
views  beyond  that  period  should  plant  themselves  betimes  on  the 
waters  of  the  West. — But  I  did  not  begin  this  letter  to  make  a 
political  essay,  but  to  renew  to  you  and  Mrs.  Preston  the  assurance 
of  my  never  dying  friendship." 


son  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  and  had  made  the  trip  of  two  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  from  there  to  Louisville  against  the  current  in  sixty- 
seven  hours, — i.e.,  at  the  rate  of  three  and  three-fourths  miles  per 
hour.  The  "  Constitution"  reached  St.  Louis  in  October,  1817,  and 
it  is  plain  that  they  then  increased  in  numbers  very  rapidly.  Davis 
and  Durrie's  History  of  Missouri,  p.  67.  Billon's  Annals  of  St. 
Louis  in  Territorial  Days,  pp.  72,  73. 


CHAPTER     VIII 

DUELS    WITH    CHARLES    LUCAS 

IN  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  duelling 
was  very  usual  throughout  this  country,  and  St.  Louis 
was  far  from  an  exception  to  the  general  rule.  Indeed, 
the  varied  population  residing  in  that  borderland  city 
seems  to  have  been  rather  more  addicted  to  the  practice 
than  most  others,  and  many  a  desperate  and  bloody  en 
counter  was  had  between  their  high-mettled  youth  on 
the  island  in  the  river,  which  came  to  be  called  "  Bloody 
Island,"  owing  to  the  fierce  nature  and  the  frequency  of 
the  meetings  of  this  kind  held  upon  it. 

In  1816  Benton  was  second  to  Thomas  Hempstead 
in  a  duel  between  the  latter  and  Joshua  Barton,  which 
ended  without  bloodshed ;  but  far  different  was  the  final 
result  in  Benton's  own  duel,  which  remains  still  famous 
among  the  many  fought  on  "  Bloody  Island."  Its  tragic 
ending  in  the  death  of  a  promising  young  man  has  made 
it  a  subject  of  controversy,  and  there  is  to-day  no  possi 
bility  of  learning  the  exact  truth. 

The  large  mass  of  commentators  since  the  event  can 
not  possibly  be  reconciled,  and  there  is,  moreover,  no  little 
divergence  in  the  contemporary  accounts  coming  from  the 
Lucas  and  the  Benton  sides.  Benton  himself  very  rarely 
referred  to  the  subject  in  later  life,  but  his  second  pub 
lished  letters  in  the  newspapers  of  the  day,  which  are 
in  part  preserved,  and  gave  an  account  of  it  to  Judge 
Gantt  in  after-years ;  while  Lucas's  father  also  published 
contemporary  statements  in  the  newspapers*  which  pre- 

*  These  statements  of  J.  B.  C.  Lucas,  the  elder,  were  reprinted 
in  pamphlet  form  in  1899  by  his  great-grandson,  J.  B.  C.  Lucas,  from 
104 


THE   LUCAS    DUELS  105 

sent  the  Lucas  side  of  the  controversy.  These  latter  are 
preserved  in  full,  while  unfortunately  the  story  of  Ben- 
ton's  second,  Lawless,  is  only  to  be  found  in  such  frag 
ments  as  the  elder  Lucas  reproduced  in  his  public  letters. 

In  this  difficulty  I  have  decided  to  confine  my  account 
in  the  first  instance  to  a  statement  of  such  facts  as  may 
be  derived  from  certain  writings  of  the  chief  actors 
which  have  been  preserved,  and  from  those  portions 
of  the  contemporary  accounts  which  do  not  seem  to  be 
subjects  of  controversy.  The  correspondence  between 
the  parties  has  been  in  part  preserved,  and  there  is  also 
a  statement  of  Charles  Lucas  as  to  the  difficulty  between 
himself  and  Benton,  written  the  evening  before  the  first 
duel.  This  paper  is  in  Lucas's  own  handwriting  and 
is  endorsed  by  him  "  Origin  of  state  of  differences  be 
tween  Thos.  H.  Benton  and  Chas.  Lucas;"  and  it  reads 
as  follows : 

"  ST.  Louis,  Aug.  ii,  1817,  9  o'clock  at  night. 

"  The  causes  of  differences  between  T.  H.  Benton  and  me  were 
as  follows:  At  October  court  of  last  year,  Mr.  Benton  and  I  were 
employed  on  adverse  sides  in  a  cause.  At  the  close  of  the  evidence 


original  issues  of  the  Missouri  Gazette  of  October  4  and  November 
i  and  15,  1817,  then  in  his  possession.  The  same  pamphlet  contains 
extracts  from  Lawless's  letter  about  the  duel  to  the  same  paper  of 
September  20,  but,  as  I  understand  it,  these  are  merely  extracts 
which  were  reproduced  by  J.  B.  C.  Lucas,  the  elder,  in  his  communi 
cation.  A  copy  of  this  pamphlet  is  to  be  found  in  the  Missouri 
Historical  Society.  At  a  meeting  of  the  latter  society  on  March  14, 
1882,  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  Benton's  birth,  Hon.  Thomas 
T.  Gantt  read  a  paper  on  Benton  in  the  presence  of  John  F.  Darby, 
Hon.  Peter  L.  Foy,  and  others,  in  the  course  of  which  he  gave  an 
account  of  the  duel  "  from  information  received  from  Col.  Lawless." 
Gantt  was  an  ex-judge  and  a  man  of  high  reputation,  but  was  of 
course  speaking  from  memory  of  what  had  been  told  him.  He  is 
undoubtedly  in  error  as  to  some  points.  The  original  of  this  address 
seems  to  have  been  lost.  The  extracts  from  it  which  I  have  used 
are  to  be  found  in  Scharf's  History  of  St.  Louis  City  and  County, 
vol.  i.,  pp.  590,  591. 


io6       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

he  stated  that  the  evidence  being  so  and  so,  he  requested  the  court 
to  instruct  the  jury  to  find  accordingly.  I  stated  in  reply  that  there 
was  no  such  evidence  to  my  remembrance ;  he  replied  '  I  contradict 
you,  sir.'  I  answered  '  I  contradict  you,  sir.'  He  then  said  '  If  you 
deny  that,  you  deny  the  truth.'  I  replied  '  If  you  assert  that,  you 
assert  what  is  not  true.'  He  immediately  sent  me  a  challenge,  which 
I  declined  accepting,  for  causes  stated  in  my  correspondence.  The 
jury  in  a  few  minutes  returned  a  verdict  for  me,  and  in  opposition 
to  his  statement.  He  never  even  moved  for  a  new  trial.  Since  that 
time  we  have  had  no  intercourse  except  on  business.  On  the  day 
of  the  election,  at  St.  Louis,  4th  August,  1817,  I  enquired  whether 
he  had  paid  tax  in  time  to  entitle  him  to  vote ;  he  was  offering  his 
vote  at  the  time.  He  applied  vehement,  abusive,  and  ungentlemanly 
language  to  me,  and  I  believe  some  of  it  behind  my  back,  all  of 
which  he  declined  to  recant,  to  give  me  any  satisfaction  other  than 
by  the  greatest  extremities.  This  is  the  state  of  the  dispute  between 
T.  H.  Benton  and  myself.  I  make  this  declaration,  that,  let  things 
eventuate  as  they  may,  it  may  be  known  how  they  originated. 

"  CHARLES  LUCAS." 

The  challenge  which  Benton  thus  sent  has  not  been 
preserved,  but  the  answer  of  Lucas  referred  to  in  his 
above  statement  was  as  follows : 

"  ST.  Louis,  November  15,  1816. 
"T.  H.  BENTON  Present. 

"  SIR  :  Your  note  of  this  afternoon  was  received.  On  proper 
occasions  or  for  proper  causes,  I  would  give  the  kind  of  satisfaction 
you  appear  to  want,  but  for  such  causes  as  the  one  you  complain 
of  under  all  the  existing  circumstances,  I  would  not  feel  justified 
in  placing  myself  in  such  a  situation,  as  to  be  under  the  necessity  of 
taking  your  life,  or  jeopardizing  my  own. 

"  I  will  not  suffer  the  free  exercise  of  my  rights  or  performances 
of  my  duties  at  the  bar  to  be  with  me  the  subject  of  private  dis 
putes  ;  nor  will  I  allow  it  to  others  for  doing  my  duty  to  my  clients, 
more  particularly  to  you  in  this  case,  who  made  the  first  breach  of 
decorum,  if  one  was  made. 

"  You  complain  of  my  having  given  you  the  lie  direct,  and  have 
as  much  right  to  complain  of  the  whole  jury,  who  on  their  oaths 
found  a  verdict  in  direct  contradiction  to  what  you  stated  to  be  the 
evidence.  My  object  was  that  no  misstatement  of  the  testimony 
should  be  made  in  hearing  of  the  jury  without  being  contradicted. 
This  was  my  duty  to  my  client  and  to  myself. 


THE   LUCAS    DUELS  107 

"The  verdict  of  the  jury  verified  the  statement  I  made  of  the 
evidence,  and  I  will  not  for  supporting  that  truth  be  in  any  way 
bound  to  give  the  redress  or  satisfaction  you  ask  for,  or  to  any 
person  who  may  feel  wounded  by  such  exposure  of  truth. 

"  Yours  &c 

"  CHARLES  LUCAS." 

It  had  best  be  stated  here,  though  this  is  by  no  means 
contemporary  evidence,  that  it  seems  that  the  language  * 
used  by  Benton  at  the  time  of  Lucas's  challenge  of  his 
vote  was  as  follows:  turning  to  the  judges  of  election, 
he  said,  "  Gentlemen,  if  you  have  any  questions  to  ask,  I 
am  prepared  to  answer,  but  I  do  not  propose  to  answer 
charges  made  by  any  puppy  who  may  happen  to  run  across 
my  path."  Such  a  term  of  contempt  could  not  be  taken  at 
that  time  by  any  man  without  losing  caste,  and  accord 
ingly  Lucas  sent  the  following  challenge ;  f 

"  ST.  Louis,  August  n,  1817. 
"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON,  ESQ., 

"Sin: 

"  I  am  informed  you  applied  to  me  on  the  day  of  the  election 
the  epithet  of  '  Puppy.'  If  so  I  shall  expect  that  satisfaction  which 
is  due  from  one  gentleman  to  another  for  such  an  indignity. 

"I  am 

"  CHARLES  LUCAS." 

Many  years  afterwards,  in  one  of  the  very  few  in 
stances  in  which  he  referred  to  this  duel,  Benton  told  of 
the  circumstances  under  which  this  challenge  reached  him. 

*  This  is  stated  by  Washburne  in  his  sketch  of  Hempstead, 
p.  6,  and  is  nowhere  disputed,  so  far  as  I  know. 

t  My  copies  of  this  note  and  of  the  other  papers  referring  to 
the  Benton-Lucas  duels  are  from  copies  kindly  sent  me  by  the  late 
Hon.  C.  Gibson,  of  St.  Louis,  from  the  originals  in  his  hands,  or 
from  the  contemporary  account  of  the  duel  by  J.  B.  C.  Lucas, 
already  referred  to.  Mr.  Gibson  wrote  me  that  he  found  the  papers 
of  which  he  sent  me  copies  among  the  papers  of  Edward  Bates. 
The  originals  have  since  all  been  deposited  in  the  Missouri  His 
torical  Society. 


io8       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

In  1856  Elihu  B.  Washburne,  who  was  about  to  deliver 
an  address  on  the  occasion  of  the  presentation  to  the  State 
of  Missouri  of  a  portrait  of  Edward  Hempstead,  called 
upon  Benton  to  talk  of  early  St.  Louis.  Benton  had  been 
a  very  intimate  friend  of  Hempstead  and  talked  ad 
miringly  of  him  to  Washburne,  saying  that  he  would 
certainly  have  been  the  first  Senator,  if  he  had  lived. 
Benton  went  on  to  say  that  he  had  been  with  Hempstead 
the  night  he  died  (August  10,  1817) — then  paused— 
and  then  went  on  abruptly ; 

"  Sif,  how  we  did  things  itt  those  days !  After  being  up  with 
my  dead  friend  all  night,  I  went  to  my  office  in  the  morning  to 
refresh  myself  a  little  before  going  out  to  bury  him  five  miles  from 
the  town.  While  sitting  at  my  table  writing  a  man  brought  me  a 
challenge  to  fight  a  duel.  I  told  the  bearer  instanter  '  I  accept,  but 
I  must  now  go  and  bury  a  dead  friend ;  that  is  my  first  duty. 
After  that  is  discharged  I  will  fight  to-night,  if  possible,  if  not  to 
morrow  morning  at  daybreak.  I  accept  your  challenge,  sir,  and 
Colonel  Lawless  will  write  the  acceptance  and  fix  the  terms  for 
me.'  I  was  outraged,  sir,  that  the  challenge  should  have  been  sent 
when  I  was  burying  a  friend.  I  thought  it  might  have  been  kept 
a  few  days,  but  when  it  came  I  was  ready  for  it." 


Colonel  Luke  E.  Lawless  acted  as  second  for  Benton, 
and  Joshua  Barton  for  Lucas,  and  a  meeting  was  ar 
ranged  to  be  held  on  the  morning  of  August  12,  on 
"  Bloody  Island."  The  seconds  drew  up  the  following 
agreement  as  to  the  terms ; 

"Articles  regulating  the  terms  of  a  personal  interview  between 
Thomas  H.  Benton  and  Charles  Lucas,  Esquires : 

"  i.  The  parties  shall  meet  at  6  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the 
I2th  inst.  at  the  upper  end  of  the  Island,  opposite  to  Madame  Roy's. 

"  2.  Each  party  shall  choose  and  provide  himself  with  a  smooth 
bore  pistol  not  exceeding  eleven  inches  in  length. 

"  3-  The  pistols  shall  be  loaded  on  the  ground  by  the  friends  of 
each  party  in  the  presence  of  both  friends  and  parties  if  the  latter 
shall  require  it. 


THE    LUCAS    DUELS  109 

"  4.  The  friends  of  each  party  shall  have  the  liberty  of  being 
armed  with  two  loaded  pistols  on  the  ground  if  they  please. 

"  5.  The  parties  respectively  shall  be  examined  by  the  friends 
of  each  other  on  the  ground  to  see  that  they  shall  have  no  personal 
defence  of  any  kind  about  them,  or  anything  that  can  prevent  the 
penetration  of  a  ball. 

"6.  The  parties  previously  to  taking  their  ground  shall  strip 
off  their  coats  and  waistcoats  to  their  shirts  respectively,  and  shall 
fire  in  that  situation. 

"  /.  Each  party  to  have  leave  to  take  a  surgeon  with  them  if 
they  please  to  the  grounds. 

"  8.  The  parties  shall  stand  at  the  distance  of  thirty  feet,  and 
after  being  asked  if  they  are  ready,  and  each  having  answered  in 
the  affirmative  they  shall  receive  the  word  to  '  Fire'  after  which 
the  parties  may  present  and  fire  when  they  please. 

"  9.  The  friends  of  the  parties  shall  cast  lots  for  choice  of 
stands  and  for  the  giving  of  the  word. 

"  10.  The  friends  of  the  parties  shall  pledge  themselves  to  each 
other  that  there  are  no  persons  on  the  Island  to  their  knowledge 
except  those  seen. 

"  ii.  If  either  party  shall  fire  before  the  word  fire  is  given  it 
shall  be  the  duty  of  the  friend  of  the  opposite  party  to  shoot  him 
who  has  so  fired. 

"  12.  The  parties  by  their  undersigned  friends  pledge  them 
selves  on  their  honor  for  the  strict  observance  of  the  above  articles. 

"Sx.  Louis,  nth  Augt.,  1817. 

"  LAWLESS. 
"J.  BARTON." 

The  parties  met  in  pursuance  of  this  agreement,  and 
at  the  first  and  only  shot  Benton  received  a  slight  con 
tusion  below  the  knee,  while  his  opponent  had  a  vein  in 
the  neck  cut  by  the  ball  and  soon  bled  so  profusely  that 
the  surgeon  and  seconds  said  he  could  not  go  on.  It 
appears  that  at  first  Lucas  was  thought  to  be  but  slightly 
wounded,  and  Lawless's  contemporary  account  is  that  at 
the  request  of  Benton  he  asked  Lucas  whether  he  was 
satisfied  and  received  a  negative  reply.  \Yhen,  however, 
Lucas  began  to  bleed  very  fast  and  the  surgeon  con 
cluded  that  he  was  too  badly  hurt  to  go  on,  Lawless 
asked  again,  and  Lucas  said  he  was  satisfied.  Benton, 


i  io       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

however,  said  then  that  he  was  not  satisfied,  and  accord 
ingly  the  parties  separated  under  an  agreement  that  they 
should  have  another  meeting  when  Lucas  was  well 
enough. 

Lawless  states  in  his  contemporary  account  that  he 
agreed  that  the  second  meeting  should  be  at  "  any  dis 
tance  from  ten  paces  to  five,  which  latter  was  mentioned 
by  Mr.  Barton  as  best  calculated  to  place  the  parties  on 
an  equality;"  but  later  the  difficulty  between  them  was 
adjusted  and  the  intention  to  have  a  second  meeting  was 
given  up.  This  was,  however,  only  brought  about  after  a 
good  deal  of  effort,  and  Lawless  goes  on  that  at  one 
period  when  Benton  "  was  about  to  withdraw  the  demand 
of  a  second  meeting,  he  was  assailed  with  reports  of 
the  most  offensive  nature  to  his  feelings  and  reputation. 
Colonel  Benton  then  saw  the  necessity  of  disproving  these 
reports,  either  by  another  meeting  or  by  an  explanation 
from  Mr.  Lucas,  from  whom  or  from  whose  friends  he 
supposed  these  to  have  proceeded." 

Lawless  continues  that  through  his  efforts  it  came 
about  that  Lucas  agreed  to  sign  a  statement  upon  this 
subject  which  Lawless  drew  up  and  thought  sufficient. 
Benton,  however,  did  not  think  it  explicit  enough  and 
rejected  it,  and  a  new  meeting  was  arranged  for,  when 
further  efforts  of  Lawless  and  other  friends  induced 
Lucas  to  sign  the  following  statement,  which  was  accepted 
by  Benton  and  the  second  meeting  given  up : 

"  In  consequence  of  reports  having  reached  Col.  Benton  of 
declarations  coming  from  me,  respecting  the  shortness  of  the  dis 
tance,  at  which  I  intended  to  bring  him  at  our  next  meeting,  I 
hereby  declare,  that  I  never  said  anything  on  that  subject,  with  a 
view  to  its  becoming  public,  or  its  coming  to  the  knov/ledge  of 
Col.  Benton;  and  that  I  never  said  or  insinuated,  or  caused  it  to 
be  said  or  insinuated,  that  Col.  Benton  was  not  disposed  and  ready 
to  meet  me  at  any  distance,  and  at  any  time  whatsoever. 

"  CHARLES  LUCAS." 


THE    LUCAS    DUELS  in 

The  account  of  the  duel  published  by  J.  B.  C.  Lucas, 
the  father,  is  to  the  effect  that,  as  Charles  Lucas  recovered, 
he  said  occasionally  that  "  knowing  the  superiority  of 
Mr.  Benton  [as  a  pistol  shot],  since  he  must  meet  him 
again,  he  would  bring  him  to  a  short  distance,  to  equalize 
his  chance;"  and  I  presume  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  here 
is  to  be  found  the  origin  of  the  reports  offensive  to  the 
feelings  and  reputation  of  Benton  referred  to  by  Lawless. 
The  challenge  from  Benton  for  the  second  meeting,  given 
shortly  belowr,  shows  conclusively  that  there  had  been  an 
accommodation,  and  shows  equally  clearly  that  Benton 
thought  that  the  stories  to  his  discredit,  which  are  men 
tioned  by  Lawless  and  which  Charles  Lucas  had  denied, 
were  still  current  after  the  accommodation.  The  second 
challenge  read  as  follows : 

"  ST.  Louis,  September  23,  1817. 
"SiR: 

"  When  I  released  you  from  your  engagement  to  return  to  the 
island,  I  yielded  to  a  feeling  of  generosity  in  my  own  bosom,  and 
to  a  sentiment  of  deference  to  the  judgment  of  others.  From  the 
reports  which  now  fill  the  country,  it  would  seem  that  yourself 
and  some  of  your  friends  have  placed  my  conduct  to  very  different 
motives.  The  object  of  this  is  to  bring  these  calumnies  to  an 
end,  and  to  give  you  an  opportunity  of  justifying  the  great  expec 
tation  which  has  been  excited.  Col.  Lawless  will  receive  your  terms, 
and  I  expect  your  distance  not  to  exceed  nine  feet. 

"T.  H.   BENTON. 

"  CHARLES  LUCAS,  ESQ." 

Lucas  was  absent  from  St.  Louis  at  the  date  of  this 
letter,  but  returned  on  September  26,  and  at  once  sent 
the  following  reply : 

"  ST.  Louis,  September  26th,  1817. 
"SiR: 

"  Your  note  of  the  23rd  inst.  has  been  received  this  morning 
on  my  arrival  from  below.  Although  I  am  conscious  that  a  re 
spectable  man  in  society  cannot  be  found  who  will  say  that  he  ever 
heard  any  of  the  reports  alluded  to  from  me,  and  though  I  think  it 
more  likely  they  have  been  fabricated  by  your  own  friends  than 


H2       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

circulated  by  any  who  call  themselves  mine,  yet,  even  without  know 
ing  what  those  reports  are,  I  shall  give  you  an  opportunity  of  grati 
fying  either  your  own  wishes  or  the  wishes  of  your  news  carriers. 

"  CHAS.  LUCAS.* 
"  THOS.  H.  BENTON." 

The  second  meeting  was  of  course  under  the  circum 
stances  looked  upon  as  a  new  and  different  duel,  and 
the  articles  regulating  it  accordingly  specify  that  they 
are  the  terms  of  a  "  personal  interview  between  Thomas 
H.  Benton  demanding  and  Charles  Lucas  answering." 
The  parties  were  to  meet  at  the  same  place  as  before  at 
six  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  September  27,  attended  by 
two  friends  and  a  surgeon  each.  The  terms  were  in 
the  main  the  same  as  those  of  the  first  duel,  except  that 
the  principals  were  to  stand  at  the  distance  of  but  ten 
feet  from  each  other,  and,  upon  the  word  being  given, 
were  to  have  three  seconds  in  which  to  fire;  after  the 
lapse  of  this  space  of  time,  they  must  stop. 

They  met  accordingly,  Benton  attended  by  Colonel 
Lawless  and  Major  Joshua  Pilcher  f  as  his  friends  and 
B.  J.  Farrar  as  his  surgeon,  and  Lucas  by  Joshua  Barton 
and  Colonel  Clemson  as  his  friends  and  Dr.  Quarles  as  his 
surgeon.  They  fired  but  once  and  the  two  pistols  were 
discharged  so  closely  at  the  same  moment  that  the  friends 
on  the  island  could  hear  but  one  report,  and  people  on 
the  bank  of  the  river  near  by  thought  only  one  shot  had 

*This  letter  is  among  the  copies  sent  me  by  Mr.  Gibson.  At 
the  foot  is  the  following  memorandum  made  by  Lucas's  second: 
"  The  above  is  as  near  a  copy  of  the  note  of  Mr.  Lucas  to  Mr. 
Benton  as  I  can  recollect.  The  copy  which  I  kept  being  lost,  I  made 
this  from  memory  the  next  day,  27th  September.  I  asked  of  Col. 
Lawless  a  copy  of  the  note  sent  Col.  B.  who  told  me  it  was  lost 
or  destroyed.  J.  BARTON." 

fThe  presence  of  Major  Pilcher,  Colonel  Clemson,  and  the 
two  doctors  named  depends,  I  think,  on  evidence  which  is  not 
contemporary. 


THE    LUCAS    DUELS  113 

been  fired.  Benton  was  untouched,  while  Lucas  was 
struck  in  the  right  arm  and  the  ball  then  lodged  near 
his  heart.  He  died  within  an  hour. 

The  foregoing  account  may,  I  think,  be  relied  upon 
as  accurate,  but  there  remain  some  rumors  and  allega 
tions  which  must  be  referred  to.  The  account  given  by 
the  father  of  Lucas  has  it  that,  after  Lucas's  fatal  wound, 
Benton  approached  his  wounded  opponent  and  expressed 
his  sorrow,  but  Lucas  answered,  "  Colonel  Benton,  you 
have  persecuted  me  and  murdered  me — I  do  not  or  can 
not  forgive  you;"  but,  as  he  felt  his  end  nearing,  he 
added,  "  I  can  forgive  you — I  do  forgive  you,"  and  gave 
him  his  hand.  The  Gantt  account  upon  this  subject  is 
that  Lucas,  after  he  fell,  caused  Benton  to  be  brought 
to  him,  expressed  himself  as  perfectly  satisfied  with 
Benton's  conduct,  and  took  upon  himself  the  blame  for 
the  meeting. 

Some  stories  were  also  current  of  Benton's  violent 
manner  on  the  field,  rolling  up  his  sleeves  and  fiercely 
stroking  his  arms,  while  the  Gantt  account  explains  that 
it  was  a  very  close  morning  and  Benton  complained  of 
the  heat,  dipped  his  wrists  in  water,  and  then  wiped  them 
off.  The  elder  Lucas's  account,  moreover,  argues  that 
Benton's  challenge  to  the  second  meeting  was  entirely 
unnecessary,  as  he  already  had  in  his  possession  Charles 
Lucas's  denial  of  the  stories  on  which  it  was  based,  and 
takes  the  view  that  Benton  was  a  practised  duellist,  vastly 
the  superior  of  his  opponent  in  such  matters,  and  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  put  Lucas  out  of  the  way. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Gantt  account  is  that  there 
was  a  plan  on  foot  to  drive  Benton  from  the  political  field, 
that  Lucas's  challenge  of  Benton's  vote  was  the  course 
agreed  upon,  and  that  Lucas  was  selected  by  lot  for  the 
purpose.  Gantt's  account  is  further  that  the  elder  Lucas 
was  in  a  rage  when  he  heard  of  the  efforts  at  a  reconcilia 
tion  after  the  first  meeting,  and  said  that  cowardice  was 

8 


ii4       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

the  motive  which  inspired  Benton,  and  that  he  was  afraid 
of  the  deadly  terms  as  to  distance  which  his  opponent 
insisted  upon.  At  first,  the  Gantt  account  goes  on,  Ben- 
ton  took  no  notice  of  all  this,  but  the  stories  continued, 
and  J.  B.  C.  Lucas  said  that  Benton  was  a  poltroon  and 
that  his  son  said  so  also. 

Finally,  Benton  wrote  Charles  Lucas  about  the  stories, 
said  he  was  satisfied  he  had  said  nothing  of  the  kind, 
and  asked  a  written  statement  to  that  effect.  This  Charles 
Lucas  expressed  himself  as  willing  to  send,  but  the  state 
ment  did  not  come,  and  the  next  day  Lucas  wrote  that  he 
could  send  no  such  letter.  He  had  at  about  this  same 
time — goes  on  the  Gantt  account — been  seen  walking 
with  his  father,  who  was  talking  vehemently  to  him. 
There  is  also  a  story,*  though  without  authority  given, 
that  once  after  the  duel,  the  elder  Lucas,  seeing  Benton 
upon  some  social  occasion,  went  up  to  him  and  publicly 
insulted  him  most  grossly,  Benton  taking  no  notice  of 
the  violent  and  abusive  language  applied  to  him. 

I  give  these  stories  for  what  they  are  worth,  but  do 
not  suppose  that  much  weight  is  to  be  accorded  them.  The 
Gantt  account  is  very  long  after  the  event  and  is  almost 
certainly  in  error  as  to  Benton  not  having  received  a 
letter  from  Lucas  denying  the  rumors  which  were  cur 
rent,  detrimental  to  Benton's  reputation  for  courage.  I 
do  not  see  how  otherwise  the  reconciliation  could  have 
taken  place,  and  Lawless's  own  contemporary  account  f 

*  Scharf's  History  of  St.  Louis  City  and  County,  vol.  ii.,  pp. 
1458,  1459- 

t  Colonel  Switzler's  History  of  Missouri,  p.  482  et  seq.,  gives 
an  account  of  the  duel,  in  which  are  reproduced  some  further  frag 
ments  of  the  Lawless  letters  of  the  day,  but  I  do  not  see  that  they 
add  anything  new.  The  account  is  in  several  respects  very  in 
accurate,  is  in  a  high  degree  partisan,  and  is,  moreover,  based  on 
some  anonymous  communication  to  a  newspaper,  and  not  therefore 
to  be  relied  upon.  In  my  investigations  I  came  across  one  such 


THE    LUCAS    DUELS  115 

is  entirely  at  variance  on  this  point  with  the  Gantt  ac 
count.  But  I  do  not  see  at  all  that  it  follows  from  this 
that  the  second  challenge  was  unjustifiable,  if  the  stories 
were  still  repeated  after  the  letter  was  sent.  And  it  must 
always  be  remembered  that  the  contemporary  story  of 
the  transaction,  as  it  comes  to  us,  comes  chiefly  from  the 
Lucas  side. 

As  to  the  stories  that  the  parties  were  determined 
to  put  each  other  out  of  the  way,  I  think  they  may  be 
dismissed.  The  correspondence  shows  that  such  was  not 
the  intention  of  Charles  Lucas,  while  the  story  that 
Benton  feared  his  opponent  as  a  rival  for  the  United 
States  Senatorship  is  an  extremely  unlikely  one,  for 
Lucas  was  barely  twenty-five  years  of  age  at  his  death, 
and  would  not  therefore  even  have  been  eligible  for  the 
office  until  the  lapse  of  five  long  years. 

Doubtless,  the  antagonism  between  the  French  and 
American  settlers  was  an  important  factor  in  the  quarrel. 
The  Lucases  were  French,  and  that  formerly  controlling 
element  was,  as  Gantt  says,  very  sick  of  the  unceasing 
push  of  the  bustling  Americans,  while  the  latter  were 
impatient  to  secure  entire  control. 

It  can  not  be  doubted  that  Benton  was  a  man  of  vio 
lent  temper  and  at  times  of  overbearing  manner,  and  a 
cooler  man  would  have  taken  no  notice  of  the  rumors 
which  busybodies  were  whispering  about  as  to  the  Lucas 
stories  of  his  bein^  afraid.  But  it  is  certainly  verv  note- 

o  J  J 

worthy  that  Charles  Lucas  himself  recorded  in  a  solemn 
paper  written  on  the  eve  of  the  first  duel  that,  at  a  time 
when  a  challenge  had  already  passed  between  himself  and 
Benton  and  thev  had  had  no  intercourse  whatsoever  for 


modern  account  very  favorable  to  Benton,  and  succeeded  after  much 
trouble  in  getting  into  correspondence  with  its  author,  who  at  once 
admitted  that  his  article  was  based  on  nothing.  I  have  of  course 
given  it  no  weight  whatsoever. 


n6       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

over  a  year,  he  saw  fit  to  challenge  Benton's  vote  and  to 
inquire  whether  he  had  paid  his  taxes  in  time. 

The  view  of  the  elder  Lucas  that  Benton  was  a  duellist 
par  excellence  is  certainly  an  error;  he  was  doubtless  a 
much  better  shot  than  his  opponent,  but  this  advantage 
was  to  a  large  extent  neutralized  by  his  willingness  for 
a  meeting  at  very  close  range,  and  the  two  duels  with 
Lucas  are  the  only  ones  he  was  ever  engaged  in  as  prin 
cipal.  His  conflict  with  Jackson  was  a  mere  personal 
encounter  and  undoubtedly  forced  upon  him. 

Gantt  maintains  that  Lucas's  death  was  regarded  by 
Benton  all  through  his  life  as  a  supreme  misfortune  to 
himself,  and  Benton  said  *  on  his  death-bed  that  he  had 
always  regretted  the  duel,  but  that  it  was  one  of  those 
unavoidable  things  forced  upon  him;  and  in  his  auto 
biographical  sketch,  writing  of  his  early  life  at  Nashville 
and  St.  Louis,  he  says  that  duels  and  affrays  were  com 
mon,  and  that  he  had  his  share  of  them.  Then,  after 
referring  to  his  encounter  with  Jackson,  he  goes  on: 
"  A  duel  at  St.  Louis  ended  fatally,  of  which  Colonel 
Benton  has  not  been  heard  to  speak  except  among  inti 
mate  friends  and  to  tell  of  the  pang  which  went  through 
his  heart  when  he  saw  the  young  man  fall,  and  would 
have  given  the  world  to  see  him  restored  to  life.  As  the 
proof  of  the  manner  in  which  he  looks  upon  all  these 
scenes  and  his  desire  to  bury  all  remembrance  of  them 
forever,  he  has  had  all  his  papers  burned  which  relate 
to  them,  that  no  future  curiosity  or  industry  should  bring 
to  light  what  he  wishes  had  never  happened." 

*  I  state  this  upon  the  authority  of  a  letter  of  reminiscences  to 
myself  from  the  late  Hon.  Richard  T.  Jacob,  Benton's  son-in-law. 


CHAPTER     IX 

ADMISSION  OF  MISSOURI  AS  A  STATE EFFORTS  TO  RE 
STRICT  SLAVERY ELECTION  TO  UNITED  STATES  SEN 
ATE MARRIAGE LETTERS 

BENTON  probably  began  soon  to  take  a  part  in  politics 
at  St.  Louis,  and  writers  generally  agree  that  he  was  very 
active  in  the  steps  which  led  to  Missouri's  admission  to 
Statehood.  His  newspaper  furnished  him  an  admirable 
vehicle  for  this  purpose.  At  the  end  of  1817  the  people 
began  to  agitate  the  subject,  and  in  March,  1818,  a  peti 
tion  was  presented  to  Congress  for  admission  as  a  State 
by  that  portion  of  the  people  of  the  territory  occupying 
about  what  is  now  the  State  of  Missouri.  But  it  was 
their  ill-fortune  to  become  the  centre  of  a  violent  political 
storm. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  opponents  of  slavery  made 
the  first  active  effort  to  prevent  its  increase,  and,  although 
it  then  existed  and  had  existed  for  years  in  the  region  and 
was  undoubtedly  legal,  there  was  a  long  and  desperate 
contest  in  Congress  over  an  effort  to  add  to  the  bill 
authorizing  the  creation  of  the  new  State  a  restriction 
intended  to  lead  in  time  to  the  enforced  extinction  of 
slavery  within  its  limits.  Owing  to  the  disagreement  of 
the  two  Houses  of  Congress  upon  this  question,  the  meas 
ure  failed  at  the  then  session,  but  early  in  the  first  session 
of  the  next  or  Sixteenth  Congress  a  new  petition  for 
admission  as  a  State  was  presented  from  the  Legislative 
Council  and  House  of  Representatives  of  the  Territory, 
and  different  amendments  were  at  once  proposed  to  pro 
hibit  slavery  in  the  proposed  State  or  in  the  territory  of 
which  it  then  formed  a  part. 

117 


n8       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  in  detail  the  contest  upon 
the  subject  which  arose  again.  The  vast  constitutional 
questions  involved  were  discussed  at  much  length  and 
with  immense  ability  by  the  great  men  of  the  day,  and 
there  long  seemed  to  be  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty. 
For  the  first  time  in  our  history,  the  country  was  divided 
on  purely  geographical  lines,  and  the  two  sections  stood 
in  almost  hostile  array,  while  the  few  Revolutionary  sires 
still  surviving  stood  aghast  at  the  terrors  of  the  situation 
and  some  of  the  people  came  to  refer  facetiously  to  the 
subject  as  the  "  Misery"  question. 

Suffice  it  to  say  here  that  at  length  the  efforts  to 
insert  a  restriction  upon  Missouri  were  abandoned,  and 
an  agreement  was  made  by  virtue  of  which  that  State 
was  to  be  admitted  without  the  restriction  of  her  powers, 
but  there  was  enacted  instead  what  has  always  been 
known  as  the  Missouri  Compromise.  This  compro 
mise  was  contained  in  a  proviso  to  the  bill  authorizing 
Missouri  to  form  a  State  government,  by  which  it  was 
enacted  that  slavery  should  be  prohibited  in  the  remain 
ing  portion  of  the  Louisiana  territory  north  of  latitude 

36°  30'. 

This  measure  with  the  proviso  received  the  final  ap 
proval  of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress  March  2,  1820, 
and  was  approved  by  Monroe  on  March  6.  The  gratifi 
cation  of  the  Missourians  over  this  issue  of  the  long 
contest  may  be  imagined.  The  proceedings  in  Congress 
had  been  closely  followed  and  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer 
had  contained  long  extracts  from  the  debates  upon  the 
subject.  How,  and  how  slowly,  news  travelled  in  that 
day  is  evidenced  by  its  issue  of  Wednesday,  March  29, 
which  says  that  "  a  traveller  from  Cincinnati  arrived 
in  town  on  Saturday  evening,  bringing  with  him  the 
National  Intelligencer  of  the  4th  of  March,  containing 
the  proceedings  of  Congress  to  the  3d.  A  hand-bill  an 
nouncing  the  happy  intelligence  contained  in  the  paper 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  119 

was  immediately  issued  from  this  office  amidst  the  ring 
ing  of  bells,  the  firing  of  cannon,  and  the  joyful  con 
gratulations  of  the  citizens." 

Steps  were  immediately  taken  to  form  a  State  con 
stitution,  and  there  was  some  discussion  among  them 
selves  whether  to  admit  or  exclude  slavery.  I  think  it 
more  than  likely  that  Benton  was  the  "  devoted  friend 
to  Missouri"  who  published  a  long  article  in  the  Enquirer 
of  April  26  advocating  slavery  in  the  State  on  the  ground 
that  it  would  be  advantageous  both  to  themselves  and  to 
the  Union.  He  was  not  a  member  of  the  Constitutional 
Convention.  Late  in  the  canvass  he  was  urged  to  become 
a  candidate,  but  after  some  hesitation  decided  to  adhere 
to  his  "  prior  declination,"  on  the  ground  that  voters  had 
generally  made  up  their  minds  whom  to  vote  for,  and  his 
entering  the  field  so  late  in  the  day  would  risk  the  loss  of 
a  member. 

But  with  the  meeting  of  the  Legislature  of  the  new 
State  on  September  18,  1820,  his  career  on  the  broad 
field  of  public  life  which  he  filled  for  so  long  may  be  said 
to  have  begun.  This  Legislature  assembled  in  the  Mis 
souri  Hotel,  on  Main  Street  in  St.  Louis,  and  one  of  its 
first  duties  was  the  election  of  two  United  States  Sena 
tors.  David  Barton  was  elected  without  opposition  to 
one  of  the  seats,  but  there  was  a  hard  struggle  for  second 
place.  Benton,  John  B.  C.  Lucas,  Henry  Elliott,  John 
Rice  Jones,  and  Nathaniel  Cook  were  all  candidates,  but 
after  many  efforts  it  seemed  impossible  to  elect  any  one 
of  them.  Benton  wrote  many  years  later  that  he  had 
been  nominated  by  a  son  of  the  great  Kentucky  pioneer 
Daniel  Boone. 

John  B.  C.  Lucas  was  the  father  of  Charles  Lucas 
and  was  the  leading  candidate  against  Benton,  and  there 
was  very  bitter  feeling  between  them.  Benton  was 
charged  with  being  an  opponent  of  Monroe's  administra 
tion,  owing  to  his  already  mentioned  opposition  to  the 


120       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Florida  treaty  and  to  the  agreement  with  England  for 
joint  occupation  of  the  Oregon  district.  In  the  apparent 
impossibility  of  making  a  choice,  it  is  said  that  Barton, 
who  was  a  man  of  unbounded  popularity,  was  given  the 
privilege  of  naming  his  colleague,  and  chose  Benton. 

But  even  then  they  were  unable  for  some  time  to 
secure  an  election,  though  it  was  only  necessary  to  gain 
for  Benton  one  more  vote.  Finally,  his  friends  decided  to 
make  every  effort  to  draw  over  a  French  member  from 
St.  Louis  County,  named  Marie  Philip  Leduc,  who  was  a 
supporter  of  Lucas.  Leduc  had  asserted  most  positively 
that  he  would  never  vote  for  Benton,  and  is  said  to  have 
declared  that  he  would  rather  lose  his  right  arm,  but 
a  number  of  French  citizens  of  popularity  and  wealth 
were  brought  to  bear  upon  him.  Auguste  and  Pierre 
Chouteau  and  Sylvester  Labadie  were  among  these,  and 
they  had  an  interview  with  Leduc  at  which  their  chief 
argument  seems  to  have  been  that  Lucas  had  shown 
hostility  to  the  French  and  Spanish  claimants  of  land 
under  grants  of  their  governments,  while  Benton  was 
friendly  to  them  and  would  take  an  active  part — as  he 
actually  did  later — in  passing  laws  to  confirm  their  titles. 

At  length  Leduc  was  convinced,  and  agreed  to  vote 
for  Benton,  but  it  is  said  that  the  whole  of  a  Saturday 
night  was  consumed  in  bringing  him  over.  It  is  worthy 
of  observation  that  political  and  personal  opponents  of 
Benton  made  no  charge  that  corruption  had  been  se-^nuch 
as  attempted. 

The  struggle  was  now  about  over,  but  there  was  still 
a  chance  of  defeat,  owing  to  the  fact  that  one  of  the 
Benton  members,  Daniel  Rails,  was  very  ill.  The  Legis 
lature  assembled  again  on  Monday  morning  in  joint 
session,  in  the  dining-room  of  the  hotel,  and  the  friends 
of  Benton  hurried  matters  to  a  vote.  Rails  was  at  once 
carried  downstairs  in  his  bed  by  four  negroes  from  the 
room  in  the  hotel  which  he  occupied,  and,  though  it  is 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  121 

said  that  he  was  too  sick  even  to  raise  his  head,  his  pres 
ence  enabled  Benton  to  secure  the  election.  Rails  died 
soon  afterwards.  "  Through  such  death-struggles  as 
this  it  was,"  says  Darby,  "  that  Thomas  H.  Benton,  with 
the  powerful  aid  of  David  Barton,  first  reached  the  floor 
of  the  American  Senate,  where  afterwards  he  used  to 
boast  that  he  had  served  six  Roman  lustrums."  * 

But,  though  Benton  was  thus  elected  to  a  seat  in 
the  Senate  in  the  autumn  of  1820,  and  though  he  was 
in  Washington  early  in  December  of  the  same  year,  at 
the  opening  of  the  session,  to  take  his  place,  he  and  his 
colleague  found  themsd&ves — as  he  expressed  it — "  de 
forced"  from  the  Senate  for  a  year,  and  he  says  with  truth 
that  he  was  "  a  soldier  without  arms"  during  the  progress 
of  a  battle  on  which  his  future  depended.  This  came 
about  for  the  following  reason. 

When  the  proposed  Missouri  constitution  was  trans 
mitted  to  Congress,  it  was  found  to  contain  a  clause  mak 
ing  it  the  duty  of  the  Legislature  to  enact  laws  to  prevent 
free  negroes  from  settling  within  their  borders,  and  this 
clause  was  claimed  to  be  in  violation  of  that  section  of 
the  United  States  Constitution  which  entitles  the  citizens 
of  each  State  to  all  privileges  and  immunities  of  citizens 
in  the  several  States.  Another  long  contest  at  once  en 
sued,  the  details  of  which  are  not  important  here.  At 
length,  on  February  28,  1821,  very  near  the  expiration  of 
that  Congress,  the  matter  was  settled  by  the  admission 
of  the  new  State  "  upon  the  fundamental  condition" 
that  the  clause  in  question  should  never  be  construed  to 
authorize  the  passage  of  any  law  violating  the  provisions 


*  My  account  of  Benton's  election  is  taken  from  Darby's  Per 
sonal  Recollections,  pp.  28-33;  L.  U.  Reavis's  St.  Louis,  the  Future 
Great  City  of  the  World,  p.  30;  View,  i.,  p.  737.  Other  writers 
also  tell  the  story.  See,  e.g.,  Wm.  F.  Switzler's  History  of  Mis 
souri,  pp.  213-215. 


122       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

of  the  United  States  Constitution  as  to  the  privileges  of 
citizens  of  one  State  in  another  State,  and  that  the  Legis 
lature  of  Missouri  should  declare  its  assent  to  this  condi 
tion.  The  Legislature  passed  the  required  law,  and  then, 
on  August  10,  1821,  Monroe  issued  his  proclamation 
that  Missouri  had  been  admitted  as  a  State. 

The  prolonged  struggle  which  had  thus  at  last  come 
to  an  end  was  the  beginning  of  the  bitter  disputes  be 
tween  the  two  sections  of  the  country  over  the  question 
of  slavery,  which  were  destined  to  grow  fiercer  and  fiercer 
and  ever  more  all-consuming,  until  they  terminated  at 
last  in  a  most  desperate  civil  war.  It  is  generally  taught 
that  those  who  advocated  the  restriction  upon  Missouri's 
rights  to  be  a  slave  State  had  become  possessed  of  a  moral 
conviction  that  slavery  was  wrong  and  that  it  was  their 
high  ethical  and  religious  duty  as  public  men  to  legislate, 
wherever  and  whenever  they  could,  to  prevent  the  in 
crease  of  the  evil. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  deny  that  many  of  those  who— 
to  their  vast  disadvantage  in  a  worldly  point  of  view — 
took  up  the  cause  of  abolition  were  guided  by  the  most 
disinterested  motives.  There  is  no  possibility  of  question 
that  many  of  them  broke  their  prospects  in  life  and  in 
curred  great  physical  dangers  by  their  bold  assertion 
of  a  despised  and  detested  opinion.  This  was  the  case  all 
through  the  history  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
sincerity  in  that  vast  wave  of  popular  sentiment  which 
swept  over  the  country  in  1820  and  insisted  in  thousands 
of  public  meetings  and  addresses  that  there  should  be  no 
new  slave  territory  within  the  Union. 

But  when  historians  ask  us  to  believe  that  these  were 
the  chief  or  only  motives,  and  particularly  that  the  poli 
ticians  and  statesmen  were  guided  by  such  high  and 
unselfish  impulses,  they  ask  us  to  believe  something  which 
can  only  be  accepted  by  those  who  are  credulous  in  the 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  123 

extreme  or  who  have  already  an  hypothesis  to  which  they 
torture  the  truths  of  history.  Such  are  not  the  motives 
which  guide  public  men,  vast  numbers  of  whom  simply 
use,  and  even  induce,  the  gusts  of  popular  passion,  so  as 
to  sweep  their  party  into  office  almost  without  thought 
of  the  ethics  of  the  question  involved. 

Benton  has  given  some  view  as  to  how  much  the  men 
in  public  life  in  1820  were  actually  guided  by  a  moral 
impulse  in  their  efforts  to  force  the  restriction  upon  Mis 
souri.  He  says  that  the  contest  was  at  that  time  openly 
avowed  by  public  men  to  be  a  question  of  political  power 
between  the  two  sections,  and  names  Rufus  King  as  one 
who  disdained  dissimulation  and  frankly  declared  that 
such  was  the  case.  King  had  taken  a  leading  part  in 
favor  of  the  restriction,  and  was  beyond  question  very 
well  acquainted  with  the  motives  which  guided  the  moves 
on  the  political  chess-board,  and  Benton  said  in  a  speech  * 
some  years  later  that  King  had  "  upon  the  floor  of  this 
Senate,  disdaining  all  disguise,  and  discarding  all  hypoc 
risy,  openly  proclaimed  that  the  Missouri  contest  was  a 
struggle  for  political  power,  and  that  he  would  sooner  see 
Missouri  remain  forever  a  haunt  for  wild  beasts  than 
come  into  the  Union  on  the  side  of  the  slave  States." 

This  same  view  had  also  its  effect  on  popular  senti 
ment,  for  McMaster  tells  us  that  politicians  pointed  out 
that  the  North  would  never  be  rid  of  Southern  Presidents 
and  Southern  rule,  if  the  slave-holding  States  were  in 
creased  in  number.  And  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer  of 
January  5,  1820,  quoted  an  article  containing  an  extract 
from  the  New  York  Daily  Advertiser  of  December  13, 
1819,  which  said  "  we  repeat  an  idea,  which  cannot  be  too 
often  brought  home  to  the  consideration  of  the  public, 
especially  in  this  part  of  the  United  States,  [viz.,  the 
aforesaid  Northern  section]  that  this  question  involves 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  i,  1829-30,  p.  26;   View,  i.,  pp.  8-10. 


124       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

not  only  the  future  character  of  our  nation,  but  the  future 
weight  and  influence  of  the  free  States.  If  now  lost,  it 
is  lost  forever." 

John  Quincy  Adams,  too,  recognizes  in  reality  the 
same  thii^g,  when  he  writes  that  "  the  struggle  for  politi 
cal  power  and  geographical  jealousy  may  fairly  be  sup 
posed  to  have  operated  equally  on  both  sides,"  for  it 
cannot  be  questioned  that  the  North  took  the  aggres 
sive  side  in  this  first  contest;  Missouri  was  in  a  condi 
tion  to  entitle  her  to  admission,  and  slavery  existed  and 
had  existed  for  years  within  her  limits  both  by  law  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact. 

So  well  does  it  seem  to  have  been  understood  at  the 
time  that  this  was  the  real  underlying  motive  in  the  con 
troversy  that  Jefferson  spoke  of  the  efforts  for  restric 
tion  as  a  "  mere  party  trick"  to  get  power;  and  Calhoun 
had  no  doubt  that  the  "  question  was  got  up  by  a  few 
designing  politicians  in  order  to  extend  their  influence  and 
power,"  though  he  did  not  believe  (as  his  correspondent 
did)  that  it  was  the  beginning  of  a  "  premeditated  strug 
gle  for  superiority"  between  the  North  and  the  South. 
Webster,  too,  recognized  very  clearly  that  the  question 
was  one  affecting  the  right  of  the  North  "  to  an  equal 
weight  in  the  political  power  of  the  government,"  but 
seems  to  have  had  in  mind  the  unequal  basis  of  repre 
sentation  which  he  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  objections 
to  making  new  slave  States.  Benton  thus  sums  up  * 
his  views  upon  the  subject: 


*  View,  i.,  p.  10.  See  also  McMaster's  United  States,  iv., 
P-  577;  J-  Q-  Adams's  Diary  for  March  7,  1820,  vol.  v.,  p.  15; 
Randall's  Life  of  Jefferson,  iii.,  pp.  456,  457;  Calhoun's  letters  of 
October  26,  1820,  and  October  i,  1821,  to  Charles  Tait,  printed  in 
The  Gulf  States  Historical  Magazine  for  September,  1902  (vol.  i.), 
pp.  92-104;  Webster's  letter  to  Henry  Baldwin,  printed  in  Van 
Tyne's  Letters  of  Daniel  Webster,  p.  83. 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  125 

"  It  was  a  federal  movement,  accruing  to  the  benefit  of  that 
party,  and  at  first  was  overwhelming,  sweeping  all  the  Northern 
Democracy  into  its  current  and  giving  the  supremacy  to  their  adver 
saries.  When  this  effect  was  perceived,  the  Northern  Democracy 
became  alarmed,  and  only  wanted  a  turn  or  abatement  in  the  popular 
feeling  at  home  to  take  the  first  opportunity  to  get  rid  of  the  ques 
tion  by  admitting  the  State,  and  re-establishing  party  lines  upon  the 
basis  of  political  principle.  This  was  the  decided  feeling,  when  I 
arrived  at  Washington,  and  many  of  the  old  Northern  Democracy 
took  early  opportunity  to  declare  themselves  to  me  to  that  effect, 
and  showed  that  they  were  ready  to  vote  for  the  admission  of  the 
State  in  any  form  which  would  answer  the  purpose  and  save  them 
selves  from  going  so  far  as  to  lose  their  own  States  and  give  the 
ascendant  to  their  political  adversaries." 

Already  at  this  early  day  Benton  writes  *  that  he  was 
"  equally  opposed  to  slavery  agitation  and  to  slavery  ex 
tension,"  and,  as  a  result  of  the  outbreak  of  the  contest 
in  Congress,  he  had  induced  the  Missouri  Constitutional 
Convention  to  insert  a  clause  prohibiting  the  Legislature 
from  emancipating  slaves  without  the  consent  of  their 
owners.  He  says  that  his  idea  in  this  was  that  only  by 
excluding  the  subject  from  the  forum  of  elections  and 
legislation  was  it  possible  to  prevent  its  agitation.  How 
ever  fully  formed  this  idea  may  then  have  been  in  his 
mind,  his  later  history  will  show  that  he  persistently  tried 
to  prevent  the  agitation  of  the  subject  by  either  side, 
and  soon  came  to  see  clearly  how7  deeply  it  imperilled  the 
Union. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  two  Missouri  Senators  found 
themselves  unable  to  gain  admission  to  the  Senate  at  its 
meeting  in  December,  1820,  owing  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
second  Missouri  contest,  and  all  that  session  passed  away 
without  their  being  able  to  take  any  part  in  the  proceed 
ings.  Benton  says  that  they  were  at  once  admitted  by 
Gaillard,  the  President  pro  tern,  of  the  Senate,  to  seats  on 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  8,  9;    C.  G.,  33d  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  560. 


126       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  floor,  and  that  they  franked  letters  and  received  pay 
precisely  as  regular  members,  but  except  in  these  respects 
they  were  excluded. 

During  this  long  period,  when  there  was  but  little 
they  could  do  in  regard  to  the  matter  of  most  importance 
to  them,  Benton  occupied  himself  in  studying  Spanish, 
and  is  said  to  have  made  himself  master  of  it  and  to  a 
large  extent  of  its  literature.  The  knowledge  thus  ac 
quired  was  highly  useful  to  him  in  later  life,  and  on 
several  occasions  he  made  careful  examinations  of  the 
early  Spanish  laws  of  Mexican  provinces  and  was  able 
to  quote  them  at  length  from  the  original* 

In  these  early  days  of  his  career,  when  he  was  begin 
ning  his  duties  as  a  public  man,  one  impression  was 
made  upon  his  views  which  must  be  mentioned  here, 
and  which  had  beyond  doubt  a  deep  influence  upon  his 
action  in  a  very  important  matter.  It  is  well  known 
that  a  time  of  apparent  prosperity  came  to  a  sudden  end 
about  the  close  of  1818,  and  that  there  was  then  one 
of  those  periods  of  financial  depression  which  have 
periodically  swept  over  the  country.  Benton  seems  al 
ready,  in  the  War  of  1812,  to  have  become  convinced  of 
the  evils  of  paper  money  and  of  the  extreme  desirability 
of  specie;  and  of  the  panic  of  1819  and  its  effect  upon 
him  he  said  f  in  the  Senate  in  1840: 

"  I  came  into  this  body  at  a  time,  and  in  a  state  of  the  country, 
calculated  to  make  those  think,  and  seriously  think,  who  were 
elevated  to  the  high  function  of  national  legislation.  I  was  elected 
to  this  body  in  the  year  1820,  when  the  hollow  and  delusive  paper 
system  was  undergoing  one  of  its  habitual  and  disastrous  convul 
sions;  and  when  my  progress  to  this  place — my  journey  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  Potomac — was  one  long  ride  amidst  the  crashings 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  col.  10.  Sketch  of  him  in  the 
Democratic  Review  for  October-December,  1837,  vol.  i.,  p.  83,  etc. 

fC.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  118.  See  also  C.  G., 
25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  216. 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  127 

and  explosions  of  banks,  and  the  cries  and  lamentations  of  a  de 
ceived  and  plundered  people.  The  National  Bank  was  then  in  the 
third  year  of  its  age;  and  so  far  from  affording  a  remedy  for  the 
evils,  it  was  itself  the  mother  of  the  evils,  and  notoriously  bankrupt, 
except  for  the  credit  and  revenues  of  the  United  States,  which  were 
lent  and  extended  to  save  it.  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  that  a 
National  Bank  was  no  remedy  for  the  evils  of  the  banking  system — 
that  it  was  itself  the  greatest  and  most  potential  author  of  all  those 
evils.  I  saw  a  vast  ruin  overspreading  the  land,  and  I  had  my 
opinion  of  its  cause,  and  of  its  remedy ;  but  I  was  a  new  Senator 
and  a  young  man  .  .  .  and  I  was  here  a  long  time  before  I  could 
act  on  this  subject." 

Still  another  event  of  importance  in  his  life  which 
happened  during  this  same  period  was  his  marriage.  He 
was  married  on  March  20,  1821,  to  Elizabeth  McDowell, 
the  daughter  of  Colonel  James  McDowell,  of  Rockbridge 
County,  Virginia,  and  Sarah  Preston.  She  was  born 
July  8,  1794,  and  was  therefore  more  than  twelve  years 
her  husband's  junior.  He  had  apparently  made  her 
acquaintance  during  the  war  through  his  friendship  with 
Colonel  James  Preston,  her  uncle,  and  his  courtship  had 
evidently  been  a  long  one.  This  was  doubtless  owing 
to  Miss  McDowell's  unwillingness  to  marry  him,  but 
their  union  turned  out  an  unusually  happy  one,  and  it 
will  be  seen  later  that  his  devotion  to  her  was  such  that 
neither  in  her  youth  nor  as  sorrows  and  trials  came  with 
years  did  she  have  cause  to  regret  her  final  decision. 

The  following  letters  will  serve  to  give  some  idea  of 
his  thoughts  and  feelings  at  about  this  period  and  during 
the  earlier  years  of  his  service  in  the  Senate ; 

[To  his   mother.] 

"  WASHINGTON  CITY,  Dec.  I3th,  1820. 

"...  I  stopped  in  Virginia  to  see  an  old  acquaintance,  Miss 
Elizabeth  McDowell,  and  to  renew  my  proposals  of  marriage  to 
her.  I  shall  call  at  her  father's  again  in  March  on  my  way  out,  and 
expect  to  be  married  at  that  time.  She  is  a  woman  of  sense,  educa 
tion,  good  breeding,  accomplishments,  and  family  equal  to  any  in 


128       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

America,  and  of  an  age  suited  to  my  own,  and  presents  the  rare 
example  of  piety  superadded.  .  .  ." 

"  WASHINGTON  CITY,  Dec.  20th,  1820. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR  : 

"  I  could  not  have  forgiven  myself  for  crossing  the  Allegheny 
without  calling  at  your  house,  if  it  had  been  any  way  in  my  power 
to  have  done  otherwise.  But  the  vortex  of  business  in  which  I  was 
swallowed  up  in  St.  Louis  detained  me  there  to  the  last  moment, 
and  when  I  sat  out  it  was  to  go  by  the  shortest  road  to  see  one 
whom  I  find  inexpressibly  dear  to  me  under  every  circumstance  of 
my  life,  and  thence  to  this  place  to  attend  to  my  duties.  In  the  spring 
I  shall  take  your  house  in  my  way  home,  and  anticipate  a  great  deal 
of  pleasure  from  the  happiness  of  being  again  for  some  days  under 
your  roof.  Since  coming  here  I  stole  a  few  days  (during  the  prog 
ress  of  a  battle  in  which  I  found  myself  a  soldier  without  arms) 
to  go  back  to  Col.  McDowell's,  where  I  learnt  that  you  had  gone  to 
Norfolk,  and  would  remain  there  for  a  month.  I  also  learnt  from 
Mrs.  McDowell  a  circumstance  which  I  regret  that  I  had  not  known 
sooner,  that  is,  that  you  think  seriously  of  going  to  Missouri,  and 
that  some  appointment  there  would  be  agreeable  to  you.  Two  had 
just  been  disposed,  those  of  Receiver  and  Register  of  the  land 
Office  in  St.  Louis.  You  could  have  had  either  from  Mr.  Monroe 
(I  am  certain)  by  naming  it,  and  we  could  easily  have  made  the 
appointment  acceptable  to  the  people. 

"I  wish  you  to  do  me  the  justice  to  believe  that  I  shall  take  the 
greatest  satisfaction  in  discharging  a  part  of  the  obligation  which 
your  uniform  kindness  to  me  has  laid  me  under,  by  promoting  any 
object  that  will  contribute  to  your  happiness  and  prosperity;  and  if 
any  thing  suggests  itself  to  you  which  my  present  situation  would 
enable  me  to  do  for  you  I  hope  that  you  will  write  to  me  and  com 
mand  me  without  reserve. 

"  The  fate  of  Missouri  is  not  decided,  nor  will  not  be  until 
some  time  in  January :  the  members  who  inhabit  the  neighboring 
states  are  dispersing  at  the  approach  of  the  Christmas  holidays,  and 
a  full  house  is  not  expected  again  for  some  weeks. — I  believe  that 
the  Resolution  *  from  the  Senate  will  pass. 
"  Yours  truly, 

"  THO.  H.  BENTON. 

"  Gov.  PRESTON." 

*This  resolution,  which  passed  the  Senate  on  December  n,  was 
for  the  admission  of  Missouri,  provided  that  such  admission  should 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  129 

"LEXINGTON,  VA.,  March   I4th,   1821. 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR  : 

"  I  owe  it  to  the  interest  you  have  taken  in  a  great  affair  of 
mine  to  let  you  know  the  progress  of  it.  I  do  this  with  pleasure  and 
pride  because,  what  I  have  to  say  will  be  both  agreeable  for  me  to 
tell  and  for  my  friends  to  hear.  It  is  no  less  than,  that,  long  before 
the  drowsy  and  heedless  post  boy  shall  transport  you  this  scrawl, 
that  is  to  say,  in  six  days  from  this  I4th  day  of  March,  which  will 
be  Tuesday  the  2Oth  day  of  this  same  March,  (if  there  is  any  trutfi 
in  the  almanacs  of  the  Ancient  dominion)  your  friend  Benedict  will 
cease  to  belong  to  the  order  of  bachelors. 

"  Time,  which  time  puts  an  end  to  every  thing,  has  even  put  an 
end  to  my  endless  courtship,  and  in  the  month  of  May  I  shall  hope 
for  the  happiness  of  imparting  a  part  of  my  happiness  to  all  my 
friends  in  St.  Louis,  both  male  and  female,  by  presenting  to  them 
one  who  is  everything  to  me  and  I  hope  will  be  something  to  them. 
In  the  mean  while  I  make,  constitute  and  appoint  you,  in  conjunc 
tion  writh  my  well  tried,  much  beloved  and  trusty  friend,  Jeremiah 
Connor  Esq.  to  spread  this  joyful  intelligence  when  and  where  it 
shall  behove  me  to  make  it  known. 

"  Thine 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 

"  ROBERT  WASH,  Esq.,  St.  Louis,  Missouri." 


"  LEX.,  VIR.,  March  2Oth,  1821. 

"  I  must  take  a  moment  on  this  great  day  to  inform  my  dear 
friends  at  Smithfield  that  I  shall  be  married  this  evening.  It  is 
indeed  a  great  day  to  me,  for  I  consider  it  the  first  of  my  life,  and 
the  beginning  of  the  only  existence  which  is  worth  having. 

"  My  dear  Elizabeth  will  set  out  with  me  the  first  week  of 
April,  and  soon  after  be  at  Smithfield,  to  stay  as  long  as  her  hus 
band's  pressing  affairs  will  permit  him  to  stop,  but  not  so  long  as 
her  and  his  wishes  would  dictate. 

"  Sincerely,  truly,  and  happily  yours, 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 
"  Gov.  PRESTON,  Smithfield,  Montgomery  County,  Virginia." 


not  be  construed  as  giving  the  assent  of  Congress  to  any  provision 
in  her  constitution,  "  if  any  such  there  be,"  which  contravened  the 
clause  as  to  the  rights  of  citizens  in  different  States.  It  failed  at 
once  in  the  House. 


130       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  WASHINGTON  CITY,  Dec.  i6th,  1821. 
"  DEAR  SIR  : 

"We  left  Missouri  I3th  Oct.  We  were  all  very  well  there 
during  the  summer,  Elizabeth  better  than  she  had  been  for  several 
years.  We  staid  two  weeks  in  Kentucky,  and  left  all  our  friends 
well  there.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  McDowell  travelled  with  us  from  that 
place.  In  the  Cumberland  mountains  we  were  stopped  five  days 
by  some  alarming  symptoms  in  Elizabeth  and  afterwards  travelled 
slowly  to  Abingdon,  where  I  left  her  to  proceed  leisurely  with  her 
father  and  mother,  and  I  came  on  in  the  stage.  She  has  wrote  to 
me  several  times  since,  the  last  from  Mrs.  Madison's,  on  the  7th, 
having  left  your  house  the  day  before.  Your  mother,  wife  and 
family  were  well,  but  suffering  an  excessive  solicitude  on  your 
account,  not  having  heard  from  you  for  a  great  while.  Mrs.  Pres 
ton  expected  you  might  be  here,  but  I  have  written  to  her  to  the 
contrary. 

"  I  expect  to  be  at  Col.  McDowell's  at  Christmas,  and  again 
about  the  first  of  February.  My  dear  Elizabeth  expects  to  be  a 
mother  at  that  time. 

"  Nothing  essential  going  on  here.  The  Captain  General  of  all 
the  Floridas  *  has  resigned.  A  letter  from  Nashville  states  he  is 
now  bestowing  his  inconsiderate  and  intemperate  abuse  upon  his 
old  friend  the  President. 

"  Pray  write  to  us,  and  let  us  know  how  you  are  and  when  we 
are  to  see  you. 

"  Your  sincere  friend, 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 

"  COL.  PRESTON,  Athens,  Georgia." 

"  SENATE  CHAMBER,  Dec.  22nd,  1822. 
"DEAR  SIR: 

"  We  arrived  here  on  the  Qth  ins.  myself,  Elizabeth  and  the 
child.  We  are  very  well,  but  had  a  narrow  escape  on  the  road,  the 
carriage  being  overturned,  and  pitched  with  violence  on  its  broad 
side  down  a  rocky  hill.  Happily  no  one  was  hurt  but  myself.  I  got 
a  cut  of  four  inches  on  the  head  which  is  not  yet  well. 

"  The  President  enquired  very  kindly  after  you,  and  expressed 
great  apprehension  for  your  health  in  your  new  situation,  and  was 

*  This  refers,  of  course,  to  Jackson,  who  resigned  the  governor 
ship  of  Florida  in  the  autumn  of  1821  and  reached  Nashville  on 
November  3. 


ELECTED    TO    SENATE  131 

fully  satisfied  at  your  not  going  to   Pensacola  last  summer,  as  it 
would  have  been  a  risk  to  your  life,  without  benefit  to  the  public. 

"  Messrs.  Crawford,  Clay  and  Adams  are  the  persons  chiefly 
spoken  of  here  for  the  Presidency,  and  of  these  three,  the  two 
former  are  deemed  to  have  the  best  chance  by  all  with  whom  I 
converse. 

"  Nothing  of  any  moment  is  yet  done  here. 

"  Yours  most  truly  &  sincerely, 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 

"  COL.  JAMES  P.  PRESTON." 


"  WASHINGTON  CITY,  Dec.  3rd,   1826. 
"  VERY  DEAR  SIR  : 

"  I  had  the  satisfaction  to  receive  a  few  days  before  I  left  home, 
your  kind  &  friendly  letter  of  Sept.  I7th  and  sincerely  thank  you  for 
such  a  proof  of  your  regard.  It  is  now  eleven  years  since  our 
acquaintance  &  our  friendship  began,  and  I  look  to  its  commence 
ment  as  an  era  in  my  life  and  one  which  is  full  of  consolation  in 
all  the  consequences  which  have  flowed  from  it. 

"  Placed  upon  an  elevated  theatre  at  this  time,  and  acting  some 
part  there,  it  is  a  matter  of  course  that  I  am  to  be  a  mark  to  one 
side  or  the  other,  and  it  is  perfectly  agreeable  to  me  that  all  the  abuse 
should  flow  from  the  side  it  does ;  in  the  mean  time  I  go  straight 
forward  with  my  duties,  and  leave  all  this  posse  of  hirelings  to  their 
own  enjoyments. 

"  The  individuals  in  St.  Louis,  to  whom  you  hint  in  your  letter, 
had  previously  fixed  my  opinion,  and  without  apparent  alteration  in 
my  conduct,  they  are  left  in  a  condition  to  do  no  harm. 

"  My  election  came  on  last  week,  and  I  have  not  the  least  doubt 
of  the  result. 

"  My  wife  and  children  are  in  the  finest  possible  health,  and,  as 
you  will  have  understood,  are  now  in  Virginia.  I  expect  to  show 
them  to  you  at  your  own  house  some  vacant  summer  when  I  do  not 
go  to  Missouri ;  in  the  meantime  I  hope  it  will  be  some  additional 
inducement  in  your  journey  to  Richmond  this  winter  or  spring,  to 
call  at  Col.  McDowell's. 

"  I  send  my  kindest  regards  to  my  aunt  Preston,  and  to  all  your 
family,  and  beg  you  to  believe  me  to  be  most  truly  &  sincerely,  your 
friend, 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 

"  COL.  J.  P.  PRESTON,  Smithfield,  Vir." 


132       LIFE   OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  SENATE  CHAMBER,  May  6th.* 
"  VERY  DEAR  SIR  : 

"  Yours  of  yesterday  is  just  received,  and  in  answer  to  it  I  can 
truly  say  that  I  appreciate  all  your  reasons  for  wishing  the  place 

vacated  by  D.  1  death,  and  would  be  happy  that  you  can  get  it ; 

but  if  you  have  no  other  dependance  than  my  interest  with  the 
admn.  and  your  own  merits,  you  are  in  the  condition  of  the  brave 
Welsh  Capt.  that  applied  to  the  Duke  of  Ormond  for  his  assistance 
at  the  court  of  Charles  the  2nd  stating  that  he  had  no  reliance  but 
on  God  &  his  Grace.  The  answer,  probably,  you  know  which  the 
duke  gave  him;  if  you  do  not,  it  was:  that  he,  the  brave  Capt. 
could  not  have  two  friends  who  had  less  interest  at  that  court  than 
"  God  &  his  Grace."  So  of  me  and  your  merits  with  this  adminis 
tration.  Brief;  my  application  would  degrade  me  and  hurt  you; 
but  possibly  others  could  do  something  for  you,  and  as  there  is  no 
success  without  trying,  I  would  recommend  you  to  apply  through 
some  administration  friends. 

"  In  much  haste,  yours  truly, 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON. 

"CoL.  J.  P.  PRESTON,  P.M.,  Richmond  Vir." 


*  This  letter  was  doubtless  written  during  the  administration  of 
John  Quincy  Adams, 
t  Name  illegible. 


CHAPTER     X 

THE   UNITED   STATES   SENATE   IN    1 82 1 RECONCILIATION 

WITH    ANDREW    JACKSON THE    PRESIDENTIAL    ELEC 
TION  OF   1824 EARLY  SERVICES  IN  THE  SENATE 

BENTON'S  career  as  an  actual  member  of  the  United 
States  Senate  began  when  he  took  the  oath  of  office  and 
was  admitted  to  his  seat  on  December  6,  1821,  three 
days  after  the  opening  of  the  first  session  of  the  Seven 
teenth  Congress.  He  and  Barton  drew  lots  for  terms  of 
office,  and  Benton  drew  the  longer  one  expiring  the  3d 
of  March,  1827.  As  they  had  been  elected  by  the  Legisla 
ture  in  the  autumn  of  1820,  during  the  Sixteenth  Con 
gress,  some  have  thought  it  doubtful  whether  either  was 
entitled  to  sit  for  six  years  after  March  4,  1821,  but  the 
question  does  not  seem  to  have  been  raised. 

The  Senate  of  that  day  was  a  vastly  different  body 
from  what  it  has  come  to  be  in  the  lapse  of  some  eighty 
years.  Instead  of  having  its  files  stuffed  at  every  Con 
gress  with  several  thousand  measures,  hardly  as  many 
as  two  hundred  and  fifty  proposals  of  all  kinds  were 
made.  Containing,  too,  but  forty-eight  members,  barely 
more  than  one-half  the  number  now  composing  it,  there 
were  but  four — those  from  Louisiana  and  from  the  new 
State  of  Missouri — who  came  from  west  of  the  Missis 
sippi  River. 

Not  one  of  the  great  triumvirate  of  Clay,  Calhoun, 
and  Webster,  which  was  in  a  few  years  to  fill  the  chief 
place  in  the  popular  eye,  was  yet  to  be  found  there;  but 
a  number  of  elderly  men  of  high  character  and  abilities 

133 


134       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

and  dating  back  to  days  preceding  the  Revolution  gave 
it  an  admirable  tone.  John  Gaillard,  of  South  Carolina, 
still  held  the  office  of  President  pro  tempore,  to  which  he 
was  so  often  chosen,  while  Nathaniel  Macon  represented 
North  Carolina  and  Rufus  King  still  sat  as  one  of  the 
members  from  New  York,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his 
politics  were  by  no  means  those  of  the  majority  in  that 
State.  William  Pinkney  was  Senator  from  Maryland  at 
the  opening  of  the  session,  but  died  in  a  few  months, 
leaving  the  reputation  of  having  made  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  speeches  ever  delivered  in  that  body.  Serving  but 
about  one  term,  his  great  oration  upon  the  Missouri  ques 
tion  had  afforded  Pinkney  a  splendid  opportunity  to  play 
upon  the  imaginations  of  his  hearers  and  to  exhibit  his 
wonderful  power  of  language.  His  great  field  was  at 
the  bar,  but  this  one  opportunity  far  exceeded  any  the 
bar  could  ever  furnish. 

In  the  House  of  Representatives,  William  Lowndes 
was  rapidly  nearing  the  deeply-to-be-regretted  end  of  his 
brilliant  career,  while  the  eccentric  John  Randolph  was 
still  to  be  seen  booted  and  spurred  and  often  fiercely  re 
viling  any  one  who  chanced  to  brush  up  against  his  opin 
ions.  James  Buchanan  and  George  McDuffie  were  just 
entering  upon  their  careers  in  federal  affairs  as  members 
of  the  House,  while  in  the  Senate  Martin  Van  Buren  was 
doing  the  same  as  the  colleague  of  the  sexagenarian  fed 
eralist  Rufus  King. 

Benton  wrote  years  afterwards,  when  out  of  public 
life  and  near  to  his  painful  end,  that  possibly  this  was 
the  period  during  which  "the  national  legislature  appeared 
to  the  greatest  advantage,  .  .  .  when  the  surviving  great 
men  of  the  first  generation  were  still  upon  the  stage  and 
the  gigantic  progeny  of  the  second  were  mounting  upon 
it.  I  came  into  Congress  at  that  period,  and  such  was  the 
awe  and  reverence  with  which  the  Senate  inspired  me, 
that  I  sat  there  six  years  without  opening  my  mouth  on 


FIRST    YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON  135 

any  subject  outside  of  my  own  State.  0!  si  sic  sem 
per!"  * 

Among  the  men  who  made  a  special  impression  on 
him  were  evidently  Nathaniel  Macon  and  Rufus  King, 
and  to  these  should  be  added  John  Taylor,  of  Caroline, 
who  came  to  the  next  Senate  and  served  for  a  short  time. 
King's  services  to  the  country  had  been  long  and  varied, 
and  he  seems  to  have  been  recognized  as  a  sort  of  father 
of  the  Senate.  He  was  one  of  the  few  federalists  who 
had  managed  to  keep  their  hold  on  public  affairs  after 
the  ruin  of  their  party,  and  was  the  recognized  head  of 
those  who  had  succeeded  to  the  bulk  of  their  beliefs. 

Imbued  with  a  strong  dose  of  the  aristocratic  tenden 
cies  so  characteristic  of  the  old  federalists  of  Hamilton's 
day,  he  was,  Benton  writes  in  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View," 
"  a  model  of  courtly  refinement,"  and  always  appeared 
"  in  the  Senate  in  full  dress  of  short  small-clothes,  silk 
stockings,  and  shoes."  Habitually  observant  of  all  the 
courtesies  of  life  and  saturated  with  an  absolute  convic 
tion  as  to  the  vital  importance  of  gentle  training  as  he 
knew  it,  there  seems  to  have  been  about  him  at  first 
some  hauteur  towards  the  new  member  from  the  "  wild 
and  woolly  West;"  but  he  was  none  the  less  a  man  of 
good  abilities  and  high  character,  and  his  services  both 
had  been  for  many  years  and  were  at  this  time  of  high 
value  to  his  country. 

Benton  writes  that  a  little  system  of  advances  on 
his  part  wras  necessary  before  he  could  gain  any  intimacy ; 
doubtless  during  this  period  of  probation  King's  hauteur 
was  slowly  thawing,  and  he  was  waking  up  to  the  knowl 
edge  that  it  was  possible  rerum  natura  for  a  "  gentleman" 
to  come  from  the  far  West.  But,  the  ice  once  broken, 


*  Examination  of  Dred  Scott  Case,  p.  74.  Benton's  memory  is 
slightly  in  error  as  to  the  length  of  time  during  which  he  was  a 
silent  member,  except  as  to  bills  relating  to  Missouri. 


136       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  new  member  was  admitted  to  a  good  deal  of  intimacy, 
and  was  then  often  in  the  habit  of  consulting  King  as  to 
matters  with  which  he  was  not  himself  thoroughly  ac 
quainted,  while  King  gladly  aided  him  in  these  matters 
and  even  in  the  passage  of  local  bills  relating  to  affairs  in 
Missouri. 

Advice,  too,  and  on  one  occasion  reproof  the  younger 
man  received  from  this  Nestor  of  the  Senate,  and  yet  so 
kindly  given  as  to  be  looked  upon  merely  as  an  evidence 
of  regard.  It  seems  that  in  a  speech  in  the  Senate  Benton 
had  become  much  excited  and  that  his  manner  had  grown 
violent  and  dictatorial;  but  the  story  can  best  be  given 
in  the  language  in  which  he  wrote  of  the  occurrence  to 
his  wife:  "  Yesterday,"  he  told  her  on  May  21,  1824, 
"  we  carried  seventy-five  thousand  dollars  for  improving 
the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio.  I  made 
a  good  speech,  but  no  part  of  it  will  be  published.  I 
spoke  in  reply,  and  with  force  and  animation.  When  it 
was  over,  Mr.  King,  of  New  York,  came  and  sat  down  in 
a  chair  by  me,  and  took  hold  of  my  hand  and  said  he 
would  speak  to  me  as  a  father — that  I  had  great  powers, 
and  that  he  felt  a  sincere  pleasure  in  seeing  me  advance 
and  rise  in  the  world,  and  that  he  would  take  the  liberty 
of  warning  me  against  an  effect  of  my  temperament  when 
heated  by  opposition;  that  under  these  circumstances  I 
took  an  authoritative  manner,  and  a  look  and  tone  of 
defiance,  which  sat  ill  upon  the  older  members,  and 
advised  me  to  moderate  my  manner." 

Benton  recognized  this  for  real  friendship,  says  that 
he  suppressed  the  speech  in  question  out  of  compliment  to 
King,  and  then  adds  that  he  has  "  studied  moderation  and 
forbearance  ever  since;  but  candor  requires  from  a 
biographer  the  admission  that  he  did  not  always  attain 
the  qualities  which  he  thus  studied.  A  great  influence 
must  have  been  exerted  over  Benton  by  a  man  who  could 
speak  to  him  in  this  way  immediately  after  a  hot-tern- 


FIRST   YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          137 

tempered  speech;  and  I  judge  from  some  remarks  in  the 
"  Thirty  Years'  View"  that  it  was  partly  King's  influence 
which  led  him,  Democrat  though  he  was,  to  feel  that 
admiration  for  Alexander  Hamilton  which  I  could  not 
at  first  understand  in  one  of  his  general  beliefs,  who  had 
lived  so  near  to  Hamilton's  time. 

But  far  more  impression  was  made  upon  him  by 
Nathaniel  Macon,  who  was  in  many  ways  the  antipodes 
of  King.  A  Democrat  in  the  very  best  sense,  absolutely 
devoid  of  that  rigidity  which  keeps  a  new-comer  at  a 
distance  until  his  pedigree  and  gentility  have  been  proven 
by  competent  evidence,  a  man  of  the  very  highest  charac 
ter  and  of  good  abilities,  Macon  had  for  many  years 
rendered  disinterested  and  most  valuable  services  to  his 
country. 

When  a  student  at  Princeton,  he  volunteered  as  a 
private  in  the  Revolutionary  army,  refusing  to  apply  for 
a  commission  which  his  birth  and  position  would  easily 
have  secured  for  him,  and  he  remained  in  the  ranks  till 
nearly  the  end  of  the  long  war.  He  took  no  pay  for  these 
services  in  the  army  and  in  later  life  repeatedly  refused 
to  accept  executive  appointments  to  lucrative  offices,  even 
while  devoting  his  time  to  such  positions  as  justice  of  the 
peace,  and  he  always  preferred  to  hold  no  place  to  which 
he  was  not  elected  by  his  fellow-citizens.  He  never  asked 
place  for  any  of  his  kith  or  kin. 

Serving  a  number  of  terms  both  in  the  House  and 
Senate,  he  was  a  constant  attendant  at  the  daily  sessions 
and  often  spoke  shortly  and  to  the  point.  Possessed,  too, 
of  very  strong  opinions,  he  was  bold  in  asserting  them 
and  in  the  maintenance  of  what  he  believed  his  rights. 
As  he  held  that  Congress  expired  at  midnight  of  the  3d 
of  March,  he  regularly  put  on  his  hat  and  went  away  at 
that  hour,  refusing  to  be  induced  to  stay  by  the  prevalent 
subterfuge  of  turning  the  clock  back  or  stopping  it.  Often 
chosen  Speaker,  he  thought  that  he  still  had  a  constitu- 


138       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

tional  right  to  vote  as  a  member  of  the  House,  and  by  his 
own  sheer  will  forced  the  counting  of  his  vote  in  a  case 
where  the  rules  of  the  House  did  not  allow  one  to  the 
presiding  officer. 

On  another  occasion,  when  Speaker,  he  was  assigned 
an  unimportant  position  at  some  ceremonial ;  but,  being  of 
opinion  that  the  Speaker  was  entitled  to  a  higher  degree 
of  precedence,  he  simply  took  the  place  he  thought  he 
should  have.  A  man  of  peaceful  methods,  he  did  not 
hesitate  for  a  moment  to  draw  his  knife  in  a  theatre  and 
aid  to  protect  his  friend  John  Randolph,  who  had  been 
attacked  by  some  army  and  navy  officers  for  a  speech  in 
Congress.  Yet,  despite  his  close  friendship  for  Randolph, 
Speaker  Macon  at  once  left  him  out  of  the  chairmanship 
of  the  Committee  of  Ways-  and  Means  when  Randolph 
had  put  himself  in  opposition  to  the  administration  of 
Jefferson.  The  latter  was  Macon's  ideal  of  a  statesman, 
but  he  thought  that  even  the  purity  of  Jefferson's  admin 
istration  did  not  last  to  the  end. 

He  disapproved  of  the  acts  for  the  benefit  of  sur 
viving  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  Revolution,  thinking 
them  wrong  in  principle,  and  voted  against  them  all — 
even  against  that  for  Lafayette — and  persistently  refused 
himself  to  take  any  advantage  under  them.  He  was 
bitterly  criticised  for  voting  against  acts  for  the  conduct 
of  the  War  of  1812,  after  having  advocated  the  declara 
tion  of  war,  but  his  answer  was  that  the  acts  in  question 
were  all  loaded  down  with  amendments  which  were 
utterly  improper  and  which  he  would  not  be  driven  to 
support. 

During  the  recesses  of  Congress  Macon  lived  in  great 
simplicity  on  his  plantation  in  North  Carolina  and,  until 
advancing  years  prevented,  regularly  worked  in  the  field 
at  the  head  of  his  slaves.  He  had  made  up  his  mind 
that  he  would  retire  from  public  life  at  seventy  years  of 
age,  and,  though  in  full  possession  of  his  powers  at  that 


FIRST   YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          139 

time,  persisted  in  his  determination,  against  the  advice 
of  many  friends,  saying  that  his  mind  was  still  good 
enough  to  tell  him  the  wisdom  of  quitting  office  before 
his  mind  quit  him.  And  when  the  end  came,  he  had  his 
body  buried  on  a  sterile  ridge  and  the  place  covered  over 
with  broken  flint,  because  no  one  would  want  to  plough 
in  such  a  place  or  to  use  that  stone  for  building. 

Macon  was  perhaps  a  little  narrow,  and  it  must  be 
conceded  that  his  rigid  adherence  to  principle  placed  him 
at  times  in  impracticable  positions ;  but  a  few  such  men 
in  a  public  assemblage  are  of  incalculable  use  in  restrain 
ing  the  actions  of  the  vast  mass  of  mere  expediency  mem 
bers.  His  integrity  and  honor  were  far  above  question, 
his  boldness  and  bravery  in  everything  were  most  marked, 
and  he  had  opinions  on  all  subjects  which  he  asserted  and 
forced  by  his  determination  into  effect.  No  one  can 
doubt  that  he  made  a  very  deep  impression  for  any  one 
man  to  make  on  our  public  affairs,  and  it  is  equally  clear 
that  his  striving  was  always  towards  the  best  interests  of 
his  country.  Men  of  his  particular  cast  do  not  often 
have  successful  public  careers,  but  most  of  us  have  known 
some  in  private  life  possessing  many  of  his  traits.  They 
are  generally  farmers  or  planters,  and  probably  the  sim 
plicity  of  such  characters  is  not  to  be  found  in  those  who 
come  from  crowded  cities.  Small  wonder  that  Jefferson 
always  spoke  of  him  as  "  the  last  of  the  Romans." 

John  Taylor,  of  Caroline,  was  another  man  of  like 
character,  and  Benton  speaks  of  him  admiringly;  but 
they  were  in  Congress  but  a  short  time  together,  and  I 
do  not  think  there  can  be  any  doubt  that  Macon  had  far 
more  influence  upon  him  than  any  one  else.  Taylor  and 
Macon  were  close  friends  as  old  men,  and  Benton  writes 
that  the  former  always  appeared  in  the  Senate  dressed  all 
over  in  a  uniform  suit  of  "London  brown"  cut  in  a 
fashion  of  former  times  and  with  a  beaver  hat  of  broad 
brim;  he  wore  also  fine  white  linen  and  supported  him- 


140       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

self  on  a  gold-headed  cane.  Macon,  too,  indulged  in  fine 
linen,  a  cambric  stock,  and  a  fine  fur  hat  with  a  brim, 
while  his  outer  clothes  were  always  cut  in  the  fashion  of 
Revolutionary  times  from  cloth  of  superfine  navy  blue — 
the  old  suit  ever  discarded,  before  it  became  shabby,  and 
replaced  by  another  one  like  it.  He  wore  boots  with  the 
pantaloons  inside  the  boot,  on  the  ground  that  leather 
was  stronger  than  cloth.* 

It  must  have  been  Macon's  example  and  opinion  that 
set  Benton  against  asking  for  office  for  any  relative.  This 
idea  of  public  propriety  was  to  some  extent  shared  by 
President  Monroe,  but  it  is  likely  that  Benton  derived  it 
chiefly  from  Macon,  with  whom  he  was  so  much  more 
closely  associated.  From  the  same  source,  too,  came  the 
inspiration  to  his  long-fought  battle  against  the  tax  on 
salt  as  sacrilegious,  and  the  like  is  the  case  as  to  his  gen 
eral  disapproval  of  the  West  Point  Military  Academy,  and 
particularly  of  its  effect  in  almost  totally  preventing  the 
promotion  of  deserving  men  from  the  ranks. 

John  Randolph,  of  Roanoke,  too,  was  among  Ben- 
ton's  intimates  in  Congress,  but  I  can  not  see  any  influ 
ence  from  his  opinions,  though  Benton  often  in  later  life 
coupled  Randolph's  name  with  those  of  Jefferson,  Madi 
son,  and  Macon,  and  was  fond  of  writing  that  he  had 
been  bred  in  their  school  and  that  of  "  all  the  fathers 
of  the  Republican  church."  As  to  the  men  of  his  own 
age  with  whom  he  was  intimate,  he  writes  that  at  his 
first  term  he  sought  and  occupied  the  same  mess  in 
Washington  with  Philip  P.  Barbour,  James  Barbour, 
William  Pinkney,  John  S.  Barbour,  John  Floyd,  of  Vir- 

*  My  account  of  Macon  is  drawn  chiefly  from  the  View,  i.,  pp. 
114-118,  and  from  a  sketch  of  him  in  the  Democratic  Review,  i.,  pp. 
17-27.  See  also  a  rather  less  appreciative  notice,  by  William  E. 
Dodd,  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  vii.  (January,  1902),  p. 
633,  etc.,  and  his  Life  very  recently  published  by  the  same  author. 
For  Taylor,  see  View,  i.,  pp.  45,  46. 


FIRST    YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          141 

ginia,  and  David  Trimble  and  Clay,  of  Kentucky.  But 
Robert  Y.  Hayne,  who  came  to  the  Senate  in  1823  from 
South  Carolina,  was  the  nearest  of  all  the  Senators  to 
him,  and  Benton  always  had  a  sincere  admiration  for 
him.* 

One  other  member,  who  came  to  the  Senate  in  1823, 
must  also  be  mentioned,  for  not  only  had  he  already  been 
an  intimate  friend  and  then  a  bitter  enemy  of  Benton,  but 
the  general  agreement  of  their  views  as  to  public  affairs 
was  such  as  led  gradually  to  the  healing  over  of  their 
differences  and  to  the  cementing  of  at  least  a  political 
union  which  came  in  a  few  years  to  be  very  close.  An 
drew  Jackson  took  his  seat  as  Senator  from  Tennessee 
early  in  December,  1823,  and  he  and  Benton  were  almost 
at  once  thrown  together  in  a  way  which  forced  them  to 
act  unitedly.  Jackson  did  not  arrive  until  a  few  days 
after  the  opening  of  the  session,  and  he  took  a  chair  next 
to  Benton — possibly  there  was  no  other  vacant  one 
available. 

"  Well,"  exclaimed  Benton,  in  one  of  his  letters  of  this  period, 
"  how  many  changes  in  this  life !  General  Jackson  is  now  sitting  in 
the  chair  next  to  me.  There  was  a  vacant  one  next  to  me,  and  he 
took  it  for  the  session.  Several  Senators  saw  our  situation,  and 
offered  mediation.  I  declined  it  upon  the  ground  that  what  had 
happened  could  neither  be  explained,  recanted,  nor  denied.  After 
this,  we  were  put  upon  the  same  committee.  Facing  me  one  day, 
as  we  sat  in  our  seats,  he  said  to  me,  '  Colonel,  we  are  on  the  same 
committee;  I  will  give  you  notice  when  it  is  necessary  to  attend.' 
(He  was  chairman,  and  had  the  right  to  summon  us.)  I  answered, 
'  General,  make  the  time  suit  yourself ;  it  will  be  convenient  for  me 
to  attend  at  any  time.'  In  committee  we  did  business  together  just 
as  other  persons.  After  that,  he  asked  me  how  my  wife  was,  and  I 
asked  him  how  his  was.  Then  he  called  and  left  his  card  at  my 
lodgings — Andrew  Jackson  for  Colonel  Benton  and  lady;  forth 
with  I  called  at  his  and  left  mine — Colonel  Benton  for  General  Jack- 

*View,  i.,  pp.  154,  182,  680;  ii.,  188,  202,  203;  C.  G.,  vol.  xiii., 
part  i,  1836-37,  pp.  890,  893. 


142       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

son.  Since  then  we  have  dined  together  at  several  places,  and 
yesterday  at  the  President's.  I  made  him  the  first  bow,  he  held  forth 
his  hand,  and  we  shook  hands.  I  then  introduced  him  to  my  wife, 
and  thus  civil  relations  are  perfectly  established  between  us.  Jack 
son  has  gained  since  he  has  been  here,  by  his  mild  and  conciliatory 
manner." 

According  to  Parton,  Benton's  brother  Jesse  never 
quite  forgave  Thomas  for  making  up  the  quarrel  with 
Jackson,  and  wrote  more  than  one  savage  diatribe  against 
the  general,  charging  him,  among  many  crimes  and  mean 
nesses,  with  cringing  to  his  former  enemies.  It  seems 
that  Jackson,  at  about  the  time  of  his  reconciliation  with 
Benton,  composed  several  other  quarrels  of  his  more 
stormy  earlier  years.* 

All  this  time  Jackson  carried  a  painful  reminder 
of  his  encounter  with  the  Bentons  in  the  shape  of  a 
bullet  lodged  in  his  shoulder.  It  is  said  that  their 
hostile  meeting  was  never  referred  to  between  them 
until  years  had  elapsed  and  they  had  passed  shoulder 
to  shoulder  through  many  a  desperate  political  en 
counter,  and  both  had  found  the  other  as  true  and 
powerful  a  friend  as  upon  the  former  occasion  a  dan 
gerous  enemy. 

After  the  close  of  Jackson's  stormy  Presidency,  the 
very  last  night  he  spent  in  Washington,  the  two  men  did 
drift  into  a  talk  and  explanation  of  the  subject,  and  found 
that  their  hostility  had  been  owing  to  misunderstandings' 
as  to  each  other's  conduct,  brought  about  largely  by 
the  tales  of  busy  carriers  of  gossip.  Probably  men  who 
have  had  bitter  contests  and  then  become  friends  again, 
hesitate  to  speak  upon  the  subject,  fearing  half  uncon 
sciously  that  they  cannot  trust  themselves;  and  it  must 
indeed  have  been  a  solemn  moment,  when  these  two 
iron-strong  characters  found  themselves  involved  in 

*  Parton's  Jackson,  i.,  p.  392 ;    iii.,  pp.  44,  48. 


FIRST    YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          143 

such  a  conversation  after  all  they  had  gone  through 
together.* 

During  the  Presidential  campaign  of  1824-25,  Ben- 
ton  was  not  at  first  a  supporter  of  Jackson,  and  early  in 
1824  he  had  written  his  brother  Samuel  that  he  thought 
either  Clay  or  Crawford  would  be  elected.  It  seems  that 
Adams  was  hardly  considered  in  Missouri,  and,  after 
Crawford's  failure  in  health,  the  contest  in  that  State 
narrowed  itself  to  one  between  Clay  and  Jackson.  Ben- 
ton  is  said  to  have  supported  Clay  warmly,  and  was  later 
charged  with  having  denounced  Jackson  as  a  very  unfit 
candidate. 

Missouri's  popular  vote  was  cast  in  favor  of  Clay  for 
President  and  Jackson  for  Vice-President,  but  no  candi 
date  had  a  majority,  and  the  election  then  devolved  upon 
the  House  of  Representatives,  Under  the  constitutional 
provision,  Clay  was  dropped  as  the  lowest  of  the  four 
candidates  and  the  choice  lay  between  Jackson,  Crawford, 
and  Adams.  There  was  a  vast  deal  of  dickering  during 
the  winter,  and  the  Missourians  and  other  supporters  of 
Clay  in  the  popular  election  were  in  a  position  of  great 
influence,  for  the  actual  choice  lay  in  their  hands.  Clay, 
as  is  well  known,  supported  Adams,  while  Benton  is  said 
to  have  at  first  canvassed  for  Crawford  in  the  election  in 
the  House.  But  Crawford's  health  was  so  broken  that 
he  became  impossible  as  a  candidate,  and  Benton  came 
out  in  favor  of  Jackson  about  the  end  of  January.  In 
so  doing,  he  broke  away  from  Clay,  as  Parton  says,  and 
here  was  doubtless  the  beginning  of  that  separation  be 
tween  these  two  men  which  continued  to  widen  for  many 
years. 

Benton's  view  is  said  to  have  been  that  Jackson  was 
clearly  the  preference  of  the  West,  and  he  refused  to  aid 

*  See  generally  Parton's  Jackson,  iii.,  pp.  47,  48,  and  Sketch  of 
Benton  in  the  Democratic  Review,  vol.  i.,  pp.  83-90,  October-Decem 
ber,  1837. 


144       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

in  frustrating  the  wish  of  the  section  which  had  trusted 
him.  Though  he  had  of  course  no  vote  in  the  election 
by  the  House,  he  had,  a's  John  Quincy  Adams  says,*  a 
"  screw  upon  Scott,"  who  was  the  representative  from 
Missouri. 

As  each  State  cast  a  single  ballot,  Scott's  power  was 
enormous,  for  he  alone  was  to  cast  the  vote  of  Missouri, 
and  he  had  therefore  the  same  voice  as  the  thirty-four 
members  from  New  York.  He  was  naturally  much 
sought  after,  and,  when  he  called  on  John  Quincy  Adams 
on  January  21  and  22  to  talk  over  the  situation  and  to 
suggest  some  of  his  ideas  as  to  the  patronage  of  Mis 
souri,  he  evidently  found  that  gentleman's  puritanical 
blood  quite  warmed  by  the  influx  of  a  candidate's  hopes. 
At  these  interviews  Scott  said  that  he  expected  to  vote 
with  the  other  Western  delegations  (by  which  he  evi 
dently  meant  in  favor  of  Adams),  but  added  that  he 
should  incur  great  opposition  for  it  in  his  own  State.  He 
urged  Clay  for  the  Cabinet,  and  was  met  in  an  accom 
modating  spirit,  and  on  the  second  day  explained  that  he 
had  had  no  idea  of  making  conditions  and  that  his  mind 
was  not  yet  fully  made  up. 

He  was  evidently  strongly  urged  by  Benton  and  doubt 
less  others  to  vote  for  Jackson,  and  seems  to  have  hesi 
tated  until  nearly  the  last  minute;  but  on  Saturday, 
February  5,  wrote  Benton,  "  notwithstanding  the  con 
versation  we  had  on  Thursday  evening  and  on  Friday, 
from  which  you  might  justly  conclude  that  I  would  not 
vote  for  Mr.  Adams,  I  am  now  inclined  to  think  differ 
ently,  and  unless  some  other  change  in  my  mind  takes 
place,  I  shall  vote  for  him ;  I  take  the  earliest  opportunity 
to  apprise  you  of  this  fact,  that  you  may  not  commit 
yourself  with  friends  on  the  subject."  To  this  Benton 
replied  as  follows: 

*  Diary,  vi.,  p.  507. 


FIRST   YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          145 

"  SENATE  CHAMBER,  Feb.  8th,  1825. 

"  SIR  :  I  received  on  the  morning  of  the  6th  instant  your  note 
of  the  5th,  in  which  you  make  known  to  me  your  intention  to  give 
the  vote  of  Missouri  to  Mr.  Adams. 

"  Sinister  rumors,  and  some  misgivings  of  my  own,  had  been 
preparing  my  mind  for  an  extraordinary  development ;  but  it  was 
not  until  I  had  three  times  talked  with  you,  face  to  face,  that  I  could 
believe  in  the  reality  of  an  intention  so  inconsistent  with  your 
previous  conversations,  so  repugnant  to  your  printed  pledges,  so 
amazing  to  your  constituents,  so  fatal  to  yourself. 

"  The  vote  which  you  intend  thus  to  give  is  not  your  own — it 
belongs  to  the  people  of  the  State  of  Missouri.  They  are  against 
Mr.  Adams.  I,  in  their  name,  do  solemnly  protest  against  your  in 
tention,  and  deny  your  moral  power  thus  to  bestow  your  vote. 

"  You  have  been  pleased  to  make  a  reference,  in  one  of  your  con 
versations,  to  my  personal  wishes  in  this  election.  I  now  reiterate 
that  I  disdain  and  repel  the  appeal ;  and  again  remit  you  to  the 
exalted  tribunal  of  honor  and  duty. 

"  For  nine  years  we  have  been  closely  connected  in  our  political 
course;  at  length,  the  connection  is  dissolved,  and  dissolved  under 
circumstances  which  denounce  our  everlasting  separation. 

"  For  some  expressions  which  you  felt  as  unkind,  in  our  con 
versation  on  Sunday,  I  ask  your  pardon  and  oblivion.  I  have  a  right 
to  give  you  my  opinion  on  a  point  of  public  duty,  but  none  to  inflict 
a  wound  on  your  feelings,  and,  in  this  unexpected  breaking  of  many 
ties,  there  is  enough  of  unavoidable  pain,  without  the  gratuitous  in 
fliction  of  unkind  words. 

"  To-morrow  is  the  day  for  your  self-immolation.  If  you  have 
an  enemy,  he  may  go  and  feed  his  eyes  upon  the  scene ;  your  former 
friend  will  share  the  afflicting  spectacle. 

"  With  sincere  wishes  for  your  personal  welfare,  I  remain,*  &c., 

"  THOMAS  H.  BENTON." 

Scott  carried  out  his  intentions,  and  on  the  day  follow 
ing  cast  Missouri's  vote  for  Adams,  who  was  chosen  on 
the  first  ballot.  Scott  was  not  again  elected  to  Congress, 
and  probably  his  action  in  this  matter  broke  his  political 
career.  Adams's  Diary  shows  that  its  author  found — as 
he  did  so  often  when  any  of  his  contemporaries  opposed 

*  These  letters  and  my  account  of  the  election  in  the  main  are 
from  Parton's  Jackson,  Hi.,  pp.  61-66. 


146       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

him — a  plot  deep  laid  in  villainy  in  these  efforts  of  Ben- 
ton  to  prevent  Missouri's  vote  from  being  cast  for  him, 
and  he  dilates  *  more  than  once  on  the  dicker  which  he 
thought  was  the  cause  of  Benton's  very  natural  action. 

Adams's  idea  is  that  Jackson  and  Calhoun,  having 
decided  to  join  forces,  induced  their  friend  Poinsett  to 
recommend  Benton  (as  he  did  late  in  Monroe's  term) 
for  minister  to  Mexico,  and  that  as  the  price  of  this 
Benton  was  to  come  out  for  Jackson.  It  seems  to  me 
very  unlikely  that  Benton,  who  had  already  gained  some 
prominence  in  the  Senate,  should  have  wanted  to  give  up 
his  seat  and  accept  the  mission  to  Mexico,  but  naturally 
his  support  of  Jackson  after  their  violent  quarrel  at 
Nashville  led  to  comment. 

He  was  charged  with  having  said  in  a  public  speech 
in  Missouri  that,  if  Jackson  were  elected,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  legislate  in  Congress  "  armed  with  pistols 
and  dirks"  for  defence,  and  placards  containing  this 
alleged  speech  were  at  subsequent  periods  posted  up  in 
Missouri  and  in  Washington.  This  charge  led  to  a  sharp 
personal  encounter  in  the  Senate  in  1832  between  him  and 
Clay,  which  will  be  referred  to  again  later. 

It  is  evident  that  Benton  became  soon  a  man  of  influ 
ence  in  the  Senate.  At  his  first  session  he  was  a  mem 
ber  of  the  committees  on  Public  Lands,  Indian  Affairs, 
and  Engrossed  Bills,  and  for  a  time  of  that  on  Military 
Affairs  by  appointment  to  fill  a  vacancy;  and  in  the 
very  next  or  Eighteenth  Congress  was  chairman  of 
Indian  Affairs  and  a  member  of  the  Committee  on  Mili 
tary  Affairs.  He  continued  a  member  of  Indian  Affairs 
until  the  second  session  of  the  Twenty-second  Congress 
(1832-33)  and  was  its  chairman  until  the  second  session 
of  the  Twentieth  Congress  (1828-29),  when  he  was 
appointed  chairman  of  Military  Affairs. 

*  Diary,  vi.,  pp.  485,  507,  522. 


THOMAS  H.  BEXTOX,  .ET.  ABOUT  35. 
From  a  painting  by  Wilson  Peale,  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society. 


FIRST    YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          147 

He  held  this  latter  important  chairmanship  without 
intermission  from  1828  until  the  close  of  the  Twenty- 
sixth  Congress  (March  3,  1841);  after  which  time  the 
Whigs,  who  then  came  into  powrer,  did  not,  of  course, 
appoint  him  chairman,  but  continued  him  on  the  com 
mittee;  and  he  was  reappointed  at  the  head  of  the  com 
mittee  as  soon  as  his  party  again  secured  control  of  the 
Senate  in  1845.  This  was  the  Twenty-ninth  Congress, 
and  he  was  appointed  to  the  same  chairmanship  at  the 
second  session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress,  but  was  excused 
at  his  own  request.  The  reason  he  was  unwilling  to 
serve  was  that  the  War  Department  was  then  under  the 
charge  of  William  L.  Marcy,  with  whom  he  had  had  a 
quarrel  concerning  the  court-martial  of  Lieutenant-Colo 
nel  Fremont. 

In  addition  to  this  very  important  chairmanship,  he 
was  in  the  Twenty-fourth  Congress  (1835-37)  appointed 
a  member  of  the  Finance  Committee, — doubtless  as  a 
result  of  his  prominence  in  the  contest  with  the  United 
States  Bank, — and  except  during  the  years  1841  to  1845, 
when  the  Whigs  controlled  the  Senate  and  dropped  him, 
he  remained  a  member  of  this  committee  until  1847.  ^n 
the  Thirtieth  and  Thirty-first  Congresses  (1847-1851) 
he  was  a  member  of  the  Foreign  Relations  Committee, 
but  in  the  last-named  one — the  last  during  which  he 
served  in  the  Senate — he  was  on  no  other  committee ;  and 
it  will  be  seen  later  that  by  that  time  his  power  as  a  party 
leader  was  much  broken  and  his  position  one  of  a  good 
deal  of  isolation.  He  thus  served  for  the  long  term  of 
twenty-six  years  on  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs, 
and  \vas  its  chairman  for  thirteen  years;  was  on  Indian 
Affairs  for  fifteen  years,  and  on  Finance  seven,  and  For 
eign  Relations  four  years. 

In  his  very  first  session  he  voted  as  one  of  a  small 
minority  of  five  against  the  Cumberland  Road  Bill,  which 
Monroe  vetoed.  He  says  that  it  passed  almost  without 


148       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

discussion,*  and  that,  though  he  saw  at  the  time  many 
objections  both  constitutional  and  of  expediency,  he  had 
felt  that  as  the  youngest  Senator  from  the  youngest  State 
it  was  not  becoming  for  him,  "  fresh  from  the  prairies 
of  Missouri,  to  harangue  the  conscript  fathers  of  the 
republic  upon  constitutional  law,  so  he  said  nothing." 
When  the  vote  was  taken,  he  was  the  first  to  answer  Nay, 
and  he  was  later  much  pleased  to  find  that  after  the  veto 
the  measure  did  not  even  receive  a  simple  majority.  He 
calls  this  bill  the  "  Gate  Bill,"  and  his  opposition  was 
largely  based  on  the  fact  that  it  proposed  to  erect  and 
maintain  toll-gates  and  to  encroach  greatly  upon  the 
States  as  to  policing  and  administering  the  road. 

He  was  not  opposed  to  all  public  improvements  by 
the  federal  authority,  but  was  altogether  against  the 
vast  extension  of  the  principle  advocated  under  Adams ; 
and  he  thought  it  should  be  confined  to  a  comparatively 
few  instances  plainly  of  great  national  benefit.  In  such 
cases  he  held  that  there  was  the  power  to  build  roads  or 
canals  in  a  State,  but  that  the  road  should  be  left  after 
its  completion  to  the  States  to  keep  in  repair  and  to  police 
properly.  Otherwise,  the  federal  authorities  would  neces 
sarily  be  in  frequent  conflict  with  those  of  the  State  as 
to  the  proper  guarding  of  the  road,  and  citizens  would 
be  subject  to  be  dragged  into  the  United  States  courts, 
and  even  to  Washington,  over  petty  quarrels  as  to  toll 
and  other  questions  with  those  in  charge ;  and  at  the  same 
time  it  would  be  impossible  for  the  federal  authorities 
to  keep  the  road  in  proper  repair,  except  by  maintaining 
a  large  force  of  men  to  watch  every  minute  detail  of 
wear  or  injury.  In  this  latter  connection  he  pointed  out 
how,  by  the  absence  of  such  a  provision,  the  maintenance 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  iv.,  part  i,  1827-28,  pp.  717-723,     See  also  View,  i., 
p.  22,  etc. 


FIRST   YEARS    IN   WASHINGTON          149 

of  the  Cumberland  Road  had  been  very  costly  and  Con 
gress  was  called  upon  to  make  frequent  appropriations  of 
large  sums  for  the  purpose. 

But,  subject  to  the  condition  mentioned,  he  approved 
of  the  general  government's  making  certain  public  im 
provements  of  great  national  use,  and  he  urged  on  more 
than  one  occasion  the  completion  of  the  Cumberland  Road 
itself,  and  complained  of  the  great  slowness  with  which 
it  was  laid  out,  and  how  it  was  made  at  times  a  sacrifice 
to  the  various  schemes  for  the  distribution  of  public 
money  among  the  States.* 

And  in  1847,  m  a  letter  to  the  Chicago  convention 
to  promote  the  lake  and  river  navigation  of  the  West,  he 
showed  that  he  had  early  advocated  the  Chicago  Canal 
as  a  means  of  connecting  the  Mississippi  River  with  the 
Great  Lakes,  and  expressed  his  general  views  on  internal 
improvements  as  follows :  "  I  have  always  been  a  friend 
of  that  system,  but  not  of  its  abuses,  and  here  lies  the 
difficulty,  and  the  danger,  and  the  stumbling-block  to 
its  success.  Objects  of  general  and  national  importance 
can  alone  claim  the  attention  of  the  federal  government, 
and  in  favor  of  such  objects  I  believe  all  the  departments 
of  the  government  are  united.  Confined  to  them,  and 
the  Constitution  can  reach  them  and  the  treasury  sustain 
them.  Extended  to  local  or  sectional  objects,  and  neither 
the  Constitution  nor  the  treasury  could  uphold  them. 
National  objects  of  improvement  are  few  in  number, 
definite  in  character,  and  manageable  by  the  treasury; 
local  and  sectional  objects  are  innumerable,  and  indefinite, 
and  ruinous  to  the  treasurv." 


*  C.  G.,  vol.  iv.,  part  I,  1827-28,  pp.  717-723.  Ibid.,  vol.  xii.,  part 
4,  1835-36,  pp.  4638-4640.  Ibid.,  part  2,  p.  1388.  The  letter  to  the 
Chicago  convention  is  printed  in  Henry  G.  Wheeler's  History  of 
Congress,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  415-418,  and  in  Niles's  Register  for  July  17, 
1847,  vol.  Ixxii.,  pp.  309,  310. 


150       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

He  called  attention  also  to  the  fact  that  he  had 
twenty-five  years  earlier  succeeded  in  including  for  the 
first  time  the  Missouri  River  in  a  bill  for  the  improve 
ment  of  the  Western  rivers,  and  five  years  later  had  se 
cured  an  appropriation  for  a  survey  of  the  rapids  of  the 
Upper  Mississippi,  so  that,  "  on  the  important  items  of  the 
Chicago  Canal,  the  Rapids  of  the  Upper  Mississippi,  and 
the  Missouri  River,  I  was  among  the  first  to  propose  to 
include  them  within  the  circle  of  internal  improvements 
by  the  federal  government." 

During  the  first  Congress  in  which  he  served,  he  was 
the  means  of  repealing  *  what  was  known  as  the  Indian 
Factory  System,  which  had  been  established  on  Washing 
ton's  recommendation,  and  consisted  in  the  United  States 
government's  conducting  the  trade  with  the  Indians  and 
trying  to  repay  itself  from  the  sale  of  furs,  etc.,  taken  in 
exchange.  Benton  had  seen  the  evils  of  this  system  in 
Missouri  and  how  both  the  Indian  and  the  government 
were  cheated,  and  he  introduced  a  bill  for  its  repeal,  and, 
though  nearly  a  new  member,  succeeded  in  carrying  the 
repeal  after  the  measure  had  been  on  the  statute-books 
a  quarter  of  a  century  and  after  he  had  failed  entirely  to 
interest  in  its  repeal  Calhoun,  to  whose  department  it 
belonged.  And  during  the  next  Congress  he  persuaded 
General  Clark,  then  Superintendent  of  Indian  Affairs  at 
St.  Louis,  without  authority,  to  make  a  treaty  with  certain 
Indian  tribes  for  their  removal  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
on  Benton's  mere  assurance  that  the  Senate  would  ratify, 
as  it  did. 

These  measures  have  lost  their  interest  to  men  of 
modern  times,  but  were  important  then,  and  particularly 
the  removal  of  the  Indians  was  a  measure  of  great  mo 
ment  to  the  Western  States.  Both  instances  are  worthy 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  20,  21. 


FIRST    YEARS    IN   WASHINGTON          151 

of  mention  here  to  show  the  influence  already  acquired  by 
Benton  at  so  early  a  date  after  entering  the  Senate. 

The  method  of  conducting  the  presidential  election 
was  a  matter  of  much  discussion  in  the  early  days  of  the 
century  and  particularly  in  the  latter  part  of  Monroe's 
second  term,  when  the  election  of  1824  was  coming  on 
and  there  were  four  prominent  candidates  in  the  field. 
In  this  matter  also  Benton  took  an  important  part,  and 
in  the  Eighteenth  Congress,  on  December  n,  1823,  intro 
duced  a  proposed  amendment.  Other  proposals  more  or 
less  similar  were  made  and  were  referred  to  a  committee 
and  later  discussed ;  and  in  the  next  Congress,  after  some 
of  the  objections  to  the  existing  system  had  been  empha 
sized  during  the  election  of  Adams,  the  subject  was  again 
considered  and  many  suggestions  made.  These  were  all 
referred  to  a  select  committee  of  which  Benton  wras  chair 
man,  and  he  made  a  most  elaborate  report  upon  the 
subject. 

The  system  he  advocated  and  which  was  proposed  in 
the  amendment  to  the  Constitution  he  submitted  at  that 
time  required  that  the  elections  should  be  held  by  dis 
tricts.  Each  State  was  to  be  divided  into  as  many  districts 
as  it  had  senators  and  representatives,  and  each  district 
was  to  cast  one  ballot  separately.  In  case  no  candidate 
had  a  majority,  a  second  popular  election  was  to  be  held 
at  an  early  date  between  the  two  highest  candidates  in  a 
similar  way,  and  there  were  certain  other  provisions  not 
necessary  to  go  into  here. 

The  elimination  of  the  cumbersome  and  useless  system 
of  electors,  and  the  extension  of  popular  influence  by 
each  district  having  a  separate  vote  instead  of  each 
State  voting  as  a  unit  (as  is  now  universal),  and  by  the 
provision  for  a  second  popular  election  in  case  of  there 
being  no  choice  on  the  first  trial,  were  the  advantages 
aimed  at  in  this  plan.  The  proposal  did  not  succeed,  but 
Benton  continued  to  think  it  desirable  and  introduced  very 


152       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

much  the  same  amendment  again  in  1835  in  the  Twenty- 
third  Congress  and  in  1844  in  the  Twenty-eighth.* 

He  rendered  an  important  public  service  in  1824-25 
in  regard  to  laying  out  a  road  through  the  vast  region 
stretching  from  the  borders  of  Missouri  to  New  Mexico. 
Since  Mexico's  independence  quite  a  trade  had  grown  up 
between  St.  Louis  and  what  was  then  known  as  the 
:k  Western  internal  provinces  of  Mexico,"  and  their  gold, 
silver,  furs,  and  mules  were  exchanged  for  our  manufac 
tured  cottons  and  other  goods,  which,  as  Benton  said, 
had  been  "  previously  brought  down  the  Ohio  from  the 
Atlantic  ports  and  factories,  .  .  .  and  bore  the  stamps 
of  Arkwright  and  Waltham." 

Adventurous  Western  pioneers  made  long  trips  as  far 
as  the  ancient  "  Sea  of  Cortez"  or  Gulf  of  California, 
but  they  were  much  hampered  by  the  Indians,  who  often 
ambushed  the  caravans  and  killed  numbers  of  the  traders. 
Benton  wanted  to  encourage  this  trade,  and  at  the  session 
of  1824-25  introduced  a  petition  from  Missouri  upon  the 
subject  and  had  it  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Indian 
Affairs,  of  which  he  was  chairman. 

In  due  time  he  reported  a  bill  to  authorize  the  Presi 
dent  to  mark  out  a  road  from  the  borders  of  Missouri  to 
the  boundary-line  of  the  United  States  "  in  the  direction 
of  Santa  Fe"  after  obtaining  the  consent  of  the  Indians, 
and  thence  with  the  consent  of  Mexico  to  the  frontier  of 
New  Mexico.  On  January  25,  1825,  he  spoke  upon  the 
subject  in  the  Senate  and  explained  the  provisions  of  the 
bill.  It  is  evident  that  he  was  very  conscious  of  the 
difficulties  in  his  way,  and  he  had  most  carefully  searched 
for  precedents  for  such  roads  and  found  a  number,  which 
he  cited. 

*A.  of  C,  1 8th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  32,  100,  160.  C.  D.,  vol. 
ii.,  part  I,  1825-26,  pp.  16,  51,  52.  Ibid.,  vol.  ii.,  part  2,  appendix, 
pp.  120-131.  Ibid.,  vol.  xi.,  part  i,  1834-35,  PP-  216,  217.  C.  G.,  28th 
Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  686,  687.  View,  i.,  pp.  37-41. 


FIRST   YEARS    IN    WASHINGTON          153 

The  chief  difficulty  was  as  to  that  part  of  the  road 
which  must  run  through  a  foreign  country,  and  on  this 
point  he  was  able  to  quote  a  case  of  a  road  built  in 
Jefferson's  time.  On  Christmas  day,  1824,  he  had  visited 
Jefferson  at  Monticello  and  "  felt  for  four  hours  the 
charm  of  his  bewitching  talk."  In  his  speech  Benton  told 
the  Senate  of  this  visit,  and  said  "  the  individual  must 
manage  badly  wrho  can  find  himself  in  the  presence  of  that 
great  man  and  retire  from  it  without  bringing  off  some 
fact  or  some  maxim  of  eminent  utility  to  the  human  race." 

Their  conversation  had  turned  on  roads,  and  Jefferson 
had  spoken  of  one  laid  out  during  his  last  term  from 
Georgia  to  New  Orleans  and  traversing  some  two  hun 
dred  miles  of  Spanish  territory.  He  had  also  said  that 
there  was  a  manuscript  map  of  this  road  in  the  Library  of 
Congress,  and  Benton  looked  this  up  on  his  return  to 
Washington,  and  at  the  very  end  of  his  speech  held  up  a 
great  folio,  opened  it,  and  exhibited  the  map  with  a  blue 
ink  line  to  show  that  part  of  the  road  passing  through  the 
dominions  of  Spain.  "  With  this  triumphant  precedent," 
he  said  in  closing  his  speech,  "  I  leave  the  fate  of  the  bill 
to  the  wisdom  and  to  the  justice  of  the  Senate." 

The  measure  passed  both  Houses  by  good  majorities, 
was  signed  by  Monroe  on  March  3,  1825,  and  was  early 
carried  into  execution  by  John  Quincy  Adams.  Benton 
writes  in  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View"  that  the  road  was 
marked  out  and  has  remained  a  thoroughfare  of  com 
merce  ever  since  between  Missouri  and  the  Western 
internal  provinces.  Very  valuable  it  undoubtedly  was, 
but  it  seems  not  to  have  been  laid  out  all  the  way,  and 
some  mistake  was  made  by  the  commissioners  in  treating 
only  with  one  tribe  of  Indians,  so  that  traders  continued  to 
be  molested  by  other  tribes  *  at  certain  parts  of  the  route. 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  i.,  1824-25,  col.  6  and  341-348.    View,  i.,  pp.  31,  41- 
44,  88.      The  Old   Santa   Fe   Trail,   by   Colonel   Henry  Inman,  p. 


154       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

The  Panama  Congress  was  a  favorite  measure  of 
Adams's  time,  and  there  was  such  a  glamour  about  it  that 
one  need  not  wonder  how  completely  the  country  and 
many  public  men  were  at  first  swept  on  to  its  support. 
In  the  days  when  the  Holy  Alliance  in  Europe  was  jeal 
ously  guarding  against  the  spread  of  popular  ideas  and 
was  undoubtedly  considering  the  question  of  restoring  her 
American  colonies  to  Spain,  there  was  indeed  grandeur  in 
the  thought  of  a  sort  of  Amphictyonic  Council  of  the  Re 
publics  of  the  New  World  coming  together  at  the  Isthmus 
between  North  and  South  America  to  concert  measures 
for  their  interest  and  to  resist  aggression  from  the  powers 
of  absolutism. 

Clay's  imagination  was  quickly  carried  away,  and  the 
administration  of  which  he  was  a  leading  spirit  soon 
urged  that  the  great  republic  of  the  North  should  send 
its  emissaries.  The  country  took  up  the  cry  and  members 
of  Congress  generally  approved,  while  those  who  dared 
to  stand  in  the  way  or  even  to  discuss  were  violently 
abused  in  the  public  prints.  Benton  was  at  first  blush  in 
favor  of  the  measure,  and  said  that,  if  he  had  spoken  early 
in  the  debate,  he  would  have  been  on  the  affirmative 
side;  but  the  discussion  convinced  him  to  the  contrary, 
and  he  made  the  last  speech  against  it.  His  view  was 
that  the  proposed  meeting  was  nondescript,  that  there  was 
no  proper  information  as  to  the  subjects  it  intended  to 
discuss,  that  its  proposals  might  become  very  embarrass 
ing  to  us,  and  that  there  was  clearly  in  it  an  undercurrent 
of  hostile  designs  upon  Spain  as  to  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico, 

44.  Captain  Hiram  M.  Chittenden,  in  his  American  Fur  Trade  of 
the  Far  West  (ii.,  pp.  532-534,  and  see  pp.  509,  510),  says  that  the 
surveyors,  in  order  to  avoid  the  perils  of  the  Cimarron  desert,  laid 
out  the  road  by  a  route  which  was  by  no  means  the  shortest ;  but  the 
traders,  with  their  American  impatience  of  delay  and  roundabout 
ways,  refused  to  follow  this  route  and  chose  instead  to  take  the 
short  cut  and  run  their  chances  of  the  risks  of  the  desert 


FIRST   YEARS    IN   WASHINGTON          155 

so  that  we  might  find  ourselves  led  very  far  from  that 
neutrality  which  we  had  always  aimed  at. 

The  measure  was  carried  and  the  delegates  appointed, 
but  the  whole  conference  ended  in  nothing.  At  the  first 
meeting  at  Panama  our  delegates  did  not  so  much  as 
attend,  and  the  adjourned  meeting  fixed  for  the  next  year 
near  the  City  of  Mexico  never  even  assembled,  so  that 
John  Sergeant  reported  upon  his  return  the  final  collapse 
of  the  whole  experiment. 

Some  will  of  course  think  that  the  opposition  to  this 
scheme  was  based  on  mere  partisanship ;  but,  though  this 
motive  must  always  have  a  hand  in  the  moves  of  party 
government,  yet  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Benton 
and  other  opponents  were  actuated  by  higher  ideas  of 
what  was  good  for  the  country.  He  and  Adams  were 
far  from  friends,  and  Adams's  Diary  shows  that  its  writer 
soon  conceived  a  violent  dislike  for  Benton,  which  the 
latter  no  doubt  returned.  He  said  later  that  during 
Adams's  Presidency  and  the  latter  part  of  Monroe's  his 
recommendation  to  office  was  of  no  effect,  and  adds  that 
Adams  always  appointed  men  of  his  own  party  and  be 
stowed  rewards  of  patronage  on  those  members  of  Con 
gress  who  supported  the  Panama  Mission.* 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xi.,  part  I,  1834-35,  col.  374;  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  p.  219.  View,  i.,  p.  66.  Benton's  speech  against  the  Panama 
treaty  is  to  be  found  in  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.,  1825-26,  pp.  304-341.  See  also 
View,  i.,  pp.  65-69. 


CHAPTER     XI 

LONG  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE  REPEAL  OF  THE  SALT  TAX THE 

PUBLIC  LANDS  AND  HIS  EFFORTS  TO  MAKE  THEIR  AC 
QUISITION  EASY PRE-EMPTION,  GRADUATION,,  HOME 
STEAD,  CESSION FLORIDA  ARMED  OCCUPATION  LAW 

—DISTRIBUTION  OF  THE  SURPLUS  AMONG  THE  STATES 
POLITICS  OF  THE  TIME DEBATE  ON  FOOT'S  RESO 
LUTION,  AND  BENTON'S  SHARE  THEREIN 

No  life  of  Benton  would  be  complete  without  an  ac 
count  of  his  long-continued  struggle  for  the  repeal  of  the 
tariff  on  salt.  It  has  been  said  already  that  he  derived 
the  inspiration  to  this  effort  from  the  opinions  of  Na 
thaniel  Macon,  but  he  took  the  question  up  from  his  own 
stand-point,  studied  the  whole  subject  in  its  commercial 
and  other  relations  most  carefully,  and  made  elaborate 
and  instructive  speeches  upon  it  time  and  again  during 
the  term  of  at  least  sixteen  years. 

His  efforts  to  secure  a  repeal  of  the  duty  were  not 
successful,  and  there  was  still  a  tariff  levied  upon  salt  at 
the  end  of  his  career,  but  early  in  the  struggle,  in  the  year 
1830,  an  act  was  passed  reducing  the  rates  by  one-half. 
His  motion  at  this  session  was  to  repeal  the  duty  abso 
lutely,  and  the  bill  he  introduced  is  also  noteworthy  *  as 
very  clearly  involving  the  principle  nowadays  called  reci 
procity,  for  it  proposed  not  only  to  repeal  at  once  and 
absolutely  all  duties  on  salt,  but  contained  also  provisions 
for  the  reduction  of  the  rates  on  a  large  number  of  speci 
fied  articles,  not  produced  in  the  United  States,  in  favor  of 
such  countries  only  as  should  thereafter  enter  into  treaties 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  I,  1829-30,  p.  172,  etc. 
156 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  157 

granting  us  similar  rights.  And  these  reductions  were 
only  to  go  into  effect  upon  the  proclamation  of  the  Presi 
dent,  when  he  should  be  satisfied  that  the  particular  coun 
try  had  granted  us  "  equivalent  advantages." 

Benton  said  that  his  measure  was  a  novelty  in  this 
particular,  and  that  it  called  for  the  abolition  or  reduction 
of  duties  by  the  "  joint  act  of  the  Legislative  and  Execu 
tive  Departments."  He  withdrew  his  proposal  later 
because  of  an  objection  that  it  raised  duties  in  some  cases, 
and  therefore  ought  to  originate  in  the  House.  So  far 
as  I  know,  this  was  the  earliest  suggestion  in  our  history 
of  "  reciprocity,"  but  the  principle  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  strongly  urged  by  Benton  at  any  time,  though  he 
will  be  found  once  again  suggesting  it  some  ten  years 
later. 

The  duty  on  salt  had  originated  in  the  year  1 789,  and 
the  rates  had  been  raised  by  several  later  acts,  but  in 
1807,  during  Jefferson's  second  term,  these  laws  were 
repealed  and  salt  went  upon  the  free  list.  But  in  1813, 
when  the  country  was  in  great  straits  for  money  to  carry 
on  the  war,  a  tax  was  again  put  upon  salt,  expressly  lim 
ited  to  last  for  one  year  after  the  war  and  no  longer. 
This  term  was,  however,  not  over  before  the  tax  was 
continued  without  express  limitation,  and  then  numer 
ous  acts  were  passed  at  different  periods  increasing  the  j 
rate.  Lender  the  acts  prior  to  1807,  moreover,  a  rebate 
had  been  allowed  upon  the  export  of  articles  cured  in  \ 
salt,  but  in  1813  this  provision  was  renewed  only  as  to 
fish, — for  the  purpose,  as  some  maintained,  of  encour 
aging  the  development  of  a  hardy  class  of  seamen.  The 
result  was  that  the  Western  exporters  of  bacon  and  other 
meats  did  not  have  the  benefit  of  the  rebate  granted  the 
New  England  exporters  of  fish. 

There  was  also  another  difficulty.  The  salt  manu 
factured  in  this  country  was  almost  entirely  made  by 
boiling  salt  water,  and  in  this  process  became  impregnated 


158       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

with  slack  and  bittern,  while  there  were  large  quantities 
of  a  much  purer  "  alum  salt"  made  in  the  tropics  by 
evaporation  of  sea-water  by  the  sun.  The  former  was 
entirely  unfit  for  use  in  preserving  meats,  butter,  and 
other  delicate  articles;  and  the  Western  producers  were 
absolutely  compelled  to  use  the  alum  salt  for  these  pur 
poses,  cost  what  it  might.  This  was  a  serious  burden, 
as  the  rates  were  very  high,  and  it  was  claimed  that,  after 
taking  into  account  all  charges,  the  tax  on  the  purer 
grades  was  as  high  as  four  hundred  per  cent.  It  is  by 
no  means  surprising  that  the  West  complained  of  this, 
while  they  saw  the  New  England  fishermen  more  than 
recouping  themselves  by  a  bounty  on  exports,  and  the 
Western  members  naturally  strove  hard  to  effect  an 
amelioration. 

Benton  insisted  that,  \vere  it  not  for  the  tariff,  salt 
would  be  largely  imported  as  ballast;  and  that  the  pro 
visions  of  the  law  as  to  the  mode  of  payment  of  the  duty 
led  to  the  trade  falling  into  the  hands  of  "  a  race  of  re- 
graters  in  the  seaports,  and  monopolizers  in  the  interior" 
who  then  fixed  the  price.  He  said  the  import  price  of 
sun-made  salt  ranged  from  three  to  nine  cents  per  bushel, 
and  that  the  result  of  existing  legislation  was  that  it 
actually  sold  in  the  seaports  at  from  forty  to  fifty  cents  per 
bushel,  while  in  the  interior,  after  the  addition  of  inter 
mediate  profits,  the  price  was  about  one  dollar.  And  he 
insisted  that  a  great  wrong  was  done  to  the  Western 
farmer  by  thus  hampering  his  ability  to  export  beef,  pork, 
bacon,  and  other  products  by  a  tariff  levied  for  the  benefit 
of  a  few  producers  of  a  very  inferior  article. 

Harrison,  of  Ohio,  made  an  effort  in  the  session  of 
1827-28  to  lower  the  duty,  but  without  success,  and  I 
have  been  unable  to  find  any  evidence  that  Benton  took 

?part  on  this  bill.     But  between  1830  and  1846  he  was 
engaged  upon  the  subject  at  least  as  often  as  eight  sep- 

;arate  times  and  in  several  different  forms.     In  some  of 

'\ 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  159 

these  instances  he  sought  the  repeal  of  the  duty  generally, 
while  at  other  times  he  aimed  to  make  the  repeal  apply 
only  to  the  duties  upon  alum  salt,  which  wras  the  higher 
grade  necessary  to  his  constituents  in  preserving  provis 
ions.  Some  of  his  bills  included  the  repeal  of  the  fishing 
bounties,  while  others  omitted  any  mention  of  them ;  and 
on  one  occasion  he  moved  a  resolution  that  the  Finance 
Committee — of  which  he  was  then  a  member — should  be 
instructed  to  inquire  into  the  expediency  of  reducing  the 
drawbacks  on  salt  allowed  to  fishermen  in  proportion  to 
the  reduction  which  had  been  made  in  the  duty  on  salt. 

One  of  the  gross  evils  of  the  situation  is  shown  here, 
for  though  the  tariff  on  salt  imported  had  been  reduced 
by  half  in  1830,  yet  the  export  bounty  was  not  reduced 
at  all.  The  fishing  interest  of  New  England  met  all  his  j 
bills  with  the  most  persistent  opposition,  for  they  weir 
knew  that  the  reduction,  let  alone  the  abolition,  of  the 
salt  duty  was  pretty  sure  in  a  short  time  to  shut  off  the 
supply  of  money  which  they  took  from  the  Treasury 
under  the  name  of  a  drawback.  To  one  who  has  lived 
to  witness  the  stupendous  struggles  of  the  tariff  benefi 
ciaries  of  modern  days  to  preserve  their  often  unholy 
advantages,  it  is  instructive  to  see  how  largely  the  earlier 
struggles  were  inspired  by  the  same  greed. 

Several  of  Benton's  speeches  on  the  salt  duty  were 
made  upon  motions  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill,  but  in 
some  instances  leave  was  refused,  while  other  bills  went 
to  a  committee  and  there  slept.  In  1837  a  measure  did 
get  through  the  Senate  with  salt  on  the  free  list,  but 
failed  in  the  House.  Benton  was  entirely  conscious  from 
the  first  that  it  was  necessary  to  create  a  sentiment  upon 
the  subject,  and  with  this  in  view  he  early  wrote  to  a 
large  number  of  persons  throughout  the  country,  sending 
them  questions  about  salt  and  its  manufacture  and  uses, 
and  then  succeeded — after  a  struggle — in  having  the 
questions  and  answers  printed  by  the  Senate. 


160       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Not  only  did  he,  moreover,  with  that  industry  which 
was  so  characteristic  of  him,  study  the  "  six  dozen  acts  of 
Congress,  general  and  particular,  passed  in  the  last  forty 
years"  upon  the  salt  tax  and  the  bounties,  but  he  investi 
gated  carefully  the  repeal  of  the  tax  in  England,  and 
quoted  at  length  from  testimony  taken  there  as  well  as 
upon  the  same  matter  in  India.  He  was  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  subject  and  with  the 
methods  of  manufacture  and  the  details  of  the  uses  of 
salt,  and  numbers  of  his  speeches  are  very  complete  upon 
these  points,  but  too  full  of  statistics  and  of  details  not  of 
general  interest  to  be  quoted  with  advantage. 

He  was  very  deeply  in  earnest  about  the  matter,  and 
on  one  occasion  in  the  Senate,  during  a  discussion  of  the 
general  principles  of  the  tariff,  where  salt  was  not  at  all 
directly  concerned,  he  threw  in  an  entirely  ungermane 
reference  to  Aurelian,  "  the  greatest  of  the  emperors  that 
ever  reigned  upon  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  and  who 
eclipsed  the  glory  of  his  own  heroic  exploits  by  giving  an 
order  to  his  legions  never  to  levy  a  contribution  of  salt 
upon  a  Roman  citizen !"  In  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View" 
he  wrote  that  he  looked  upon  a  salt  tax  "  as  a  curse, — 
as  something  worse  than  a  political  blunder,  great  as 
that  is, — as  an  impiety,  in  stinting  the  use,  and  enhancing 
the  cost  by  taxation,  of  an  article  which  God  has  made 
necessary  to  the  health  and  comfort,  and  almost  to  the 
life,  of  every  animated  being.  .  .  .  The  venerable  Mr. 
Macon  considered  a  salt  tax  in  a  sacrilegious  point  of 
view — as  breaking  a  sacred  law — and  fought  against 
ours  as  long  as  his  public  life  lasted ;  and  I,  his  disciple, 
not  disesteemed  by  him,  commenced  fighting  by  his  side 
against  the  odious  imposition."  In  one  of  his  speeches 
upon  the  subject  in  the  Senate  he  vituperated  against  the 
tax  in  the  following  language : 

Mr.  Benton  concluded  his  speech  with  declaring  implacable 
war  against  this  tax,  with  all  its  appurtenant  abuses,  of  monopoly 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  161 

in  one  quarter  of  the  Union,  and  of  undue  advantages  in  another. 
He  denounced  it  as  a  tax  upon  the  entire  economy  of  NATURE  and 
of  ART — a  tax  upon  man  and  upon  beast — upon  life  and  upon  health 
— upon  comfort  and  luxury — upon  want  and  superfluity — upon  food 
and  upon  raiment— on  washing  and  on  cleanliness.  He  called  it  a 
heartless  and  tyrant  tax,  as  inexorable  as  it  was  omnipotent  and 
omnipresent;  a  tax  which  no  economy  could  avoid — no  poverty 
could  shun — no  privation  escape — no  cunning  elude — no  force  resist 
— no  dexterity  avert — no  curses  repulse — no  prayers  could  deprecate. 
It  was  a  tax  which  invaded  the  entire  dominion  of  human  opera 
tions,  falling  with  its  greatest  weight  upon  the  most  helpless,  and 
the  most  meritorious ;  and  depriving  the  nation  of  benefits  infinitely 
transcending  in  value  the  amount  of  its  own  product.  "  I  devote 
myself,"  said  Mr.  Benton,  "  to  the  extirpation  of  this  odious  tax,  and 
its  still  more  odious  progeny — the  salt  monopoly  of  the  West.  I  war 
against  them  while  they  exist,  and  I  remain  on  this  floor.  Twelve 
years  have  passed  away — two  years  more  than  the  siege  of  Troy 
lasted — since  I  began  this  contest.  Nothing  disheartened  by  so 
many  defeats,  in  so  long  a  time,  I  prosecute  the  war  with  unabated 
vigor ;  and,  relying  upon  the  goodness  of  the  cause,  firmly  calculate 
upon  ultimate  and  final  success."  * 

As  has  been  seen,  Benton's  efforts  upon  this  subject 
had  at  best  no  more  than  a  partial  success  at  the  very 
start,  and  some  will  consider  his  long  struggle  a  waste 
of  time.  This  is  particularly  likely  nowadays,  when  an 
idea  has  got  abroad  that  a  legislator  should  not  oppose 
bills  which  are,  in  the  phrase  of  the  hour,  "  sure  to  pass." 
But  there  could  hardly  be  a  more  mistaken  belief,  and  it 
is  one,  moreover,  which  has  a  distinct  tendency  to  under 
mine  representative  government. 

*  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  401.  Details  as  to 
Benton's  efforts  upon  the  general  subject  may  be  found  at  the  fol 
lowing  references.  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  I,  1829-30,  pp.  172,  etc.,  244, 
245,  428,  etc.  Ibid.,  vol.  vii.,  1830-31,  pp.  120,  etc.,  193,  194.  Ibid.,  vol. 
viii.,  part  I,  1831-32,  pp.  31,  etc.,  41,  571,  etc.  Ibid.,  vol.  xiii.,  part  i, 
1836-37,  pp.  884,  etc.,  938,  939,  981.  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess., 
appendix,  pp.  135,  etc.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  186,  209; 
ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  177,  etc.,  p.  390,  etc.,  401.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  p.  105.  Ibid.,  29th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  190,  538,  539,  1193. 
View,  i.,  pp.  154,  273. 

ii 


162       LIFE   OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

One  of  the  highest  duties  of  a  member  of  a  legislative 
body  is  on  proper  occasions  to  oppose  to  the  end  a  measure 
he  strongly  disapproves,  without  regard  to  the  opinions 
of  his  associates,  and  though  he  may  know  that,  when  the 
vote  is  taken,  he  will  be  in  a  hopeless  minority.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  public  sentiment  has  often  been  created, 
the  opinions  of  a  community  and  of  the  legislative  body 
completely  reversed,  and  as  great  a  majority  finally  se 
cured  against  a  particular  course  of  action  as  originally 
appeared  in  its  favor. 

It  will  be  seen  in  Benton's  career  that  he  frequently 
opposed  bills  which  had  every  promise  of  passing  by  a 
good  majority;  and,  though  there  are  numerous  in 
stances,  like  that  of  the  salt  tax,  where  his  efforts  failed 
in  good  part  or  even  entirely,  yet  others  will  be  found  in 
plenty  where  his  agitation  of  a  subject  produced  its  result 
and  he  succeeded  in  the  end  in  convincing  his  colleagues 
and  the  public  that  he  was  right.  Having  considered  an 
instance  of  the  first  kind,  it  will  be  well  now  to  take  up 
another  one  in  which  his  efforts  again  covered  the  whole 
period  of  his  public  career  and  were  at  first  treated  with 
possibly  more  ridicule  than  was  his  struggle  as  to  the 
salt  tax,  yet  gained  gradually  so  large  a  measure  of  suc 
cess  that  before  the  end  of  his  public  career  not  only  was 
much  of  what  he  had  early  contended  for  accepted,  but 
legislation  upon  the  subject  had  gone  in  the  same  general 
direction  far  ahead  of  what  he  had  at  first  thought  it 
expedient  to  advocate. 

By  virtue  of  the  Louisiana  and  Florida  treaties,  and 
of  various  Acts  of  cession  made  by  different  States  of  the 
Union,  the  United  States  were  possessed  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  of  an  enormous  area  of  land  which 
was  almost  entirely  unsettled.  The  method  of  dealing 
with  this  was  a  question  of  immense  importance  upon 
which  there  was  the  greatest  difference  of  opinion  be 
tween  the  inhabitants  of  the  old  States  and  those  whose 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  163 

lot  was  cast  in  the  rapidly  growing  communities  forming 
in  the  ceded  or  purchased  land. 

The  old  States  generally — and  particularly,  for  the 
reasons  already  shown,  those  comprising  the  northeast 
ern  part  of  the  Union — felt  a  profound  distrust  and 
jealousy  of  these  newer  regions,  which  were  taking  off 
the  young  men  of  the  older  communities  and  were  threat 
ening  to  acquire  a  vast  powrer  in  the  federal  councils.  A 
great  influence  was  exerted  for  many  years  by  the  desire 
to  curb  this  growth  and  its  inevitable  effect,  nor  has  this 
feeling  even  yet  died  out ;  but  some  men  were  wise  enough 
to  look  upon  the  question  from  a  broad  stand-point. 

George  Mason  said  *  in  the  Federal  Convention  of 
1787  that  "  if  it  were  possible  by  just  means  to  prevent 
immigration  to  the  Western  country,  it  might  be  good 
policy,"  but  with  the  wisdom  of  a  statesman  he  opposed 
all  efforts  to  fix  upon  the  coming  States  any  inequality, 
and  went  on,  "  but  go  the  people  will,  as  they  find  it  for 
their  interest;  and  the  best  policy  is  to  treat  them  with 
that  equality  which  will  make  them  friends,  not  enemies." 

The  people  in  the  new  regions  felt,  of  course,  that  they 
were  entitled  to  the  same  treatment  and  rights  as  the  older 
States,  and  persistently  opposed  all  measures  likely  to 
delay  their  growth.  They  wrere  anxious  for  the  passage 
of  laws  to  facilitate  the  coming  of  settlers  among  them 
and  particularly  to  make  easy  the  acquisition  of  land  to 
immigrants,  and  they  inveighed  against  the  policy  of 
considering  the  vacant  lands  merely  as  a  money-making 
asset  of  the  general  government. 

By  the  earlier  laws,  the  land  was  offered  at  public 
sale  to  the  highest  bidder,  and  if  not  bought,  could  then 
be  taken  up  by  any  private  person  at  two  dollars  per 
acre,  largely  on  credit.  But  the  credit  feature  led  to  a 
great  deal  of  hardship,  and  so  many  lost  their  lands 


*  Elliot's  Debates,  v.,  p.  492. 


164       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

through  inability  to  make  the  later  payments,  that  Con 
gress  passed  a  law  in  1820  requiring  cash  payments,  but 
lowering  the  minimum  price  to  one  dollar  and  a  quarter 
]  per  acre.  Under  this  law,  land  which  had  been  offered 
at  public  sale  at  that  price  as  a  minimum  and  had  not 
been  purchased,  could  be  taken  up  in  unlimited  quantities 
of  not  less  than  eighty  acres  at  private  sale. 

This  was  the  law  when  Benton  came  to  the  Senate, 
and  there  was  then  no  provision  whatsoever  either  for 
pre-emption,  which  is  a  preference  or  first  right  to  buy  at 
the  minimum  price,  accorded  to  an  actual  settler  on  a 
specific  tract,  or  for  a  homestead,  which  is  a  right  given 
to  any  person  who  actually  settles  and  cultivates  to  take 
up  and  later  receive  a  patent  for  a  tract  of  ascertained 
size,  without  charge  other  than  one  calculated  to  cover 
the  mere  expenses  of  survey  and  so  forth. 

It  has  been  seen  already  that  Benton,  who  lived  among 
a  pioneer  people  and  knew  their  trials  as  well  as  their 
opportunities,  had  early  become  impressed  with  the  im 
mense  value  to  them  of  some  landed  possessions.  The 
method  of  leasing  on  his  family  tract  made,  of  course,  a 
profound  impression  upon  his  ideas,  while  the  history  of 
"  Granny  White,"  and  her  avoidance  of  the  poor-house 
and  attainment  of  very  reasonable  comfort  after  she  got 
a  corner  of  mother  earth  to  cultivate,  was  indeed  a  strik 
ing  lesson ;  and  his  knowledge  of  many  settlers  who  had 
moved  on  to  the  very  verge  of  civilization  and  there 
planted  their  few  but,  to  them,  so  precious  household  gods 
cultivated  in  him  a  deep  sympathy  and  made  him  their 
friend  and  advocate  all  his  life  long.  He  says  that  he 
does  not  know  how  young  he  was  when  he  became  con 
vinced  that  sales  of  land  by  a  government  to  the  highest 
bidder  among  its  own  citizens  was  a  false  policy,  and 
that  the  true  course  was  to  be  found  in  "  gratuitous 
grants  to  actual  settlers,"  whose  labor  would  then  extract 
wealth  from  the  soil  and  add  to  the  strength  of  the  nation. 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  165 

He  had  seen  or  heard  of  the  effects  of  such  a  policy 
in  Tennessee  from  the  earliest  settlers,  who  had  received 
free  grants  from  North  Carolina,  and  says  that  he  was 
already  imbued  with  the  principle  of  "donations"  (the 
modern  term  homestead  was  not  then  in  use)  when  he 
advocated  in  the  Tennessee  Legislature  the  pre-emption 
rights  of  certain  settlers  who  were  in  danger  of  losing 
the  farms  they  had  partially  reclaimed,  through  the  sale 
of  them  by  the  United  States  to  persons  more  able  to 
make  the  necessary  payments. 

When  he  reached  the  Senate,  he  found  that  the  pre 
vailing  voice  was  overwhelmingly  against  him;  and  the 
claimant  of  pre-emption  rights,  who  had  undoubtedly 
settled  on  public  lands  without  any  strict  right,  was  gen 
erally  looked  upon  as  a  mere  squatter  and  trespasser, 
rather  deserving  of  prosecution  under  the  criminal  law 
than  of  tender  consideration  or  free  donations.  Under 
these  circumstances  Benton  took  the  subject  up  in  a  few 
years  and  tried  to  arouse  public  opinion,  especially  in  the 
new  States.  His  first  bill  \vas  introduced  into  the  Senate 
in  1824,  and  similar  ones  were  again  presented  by  him 
at  subsequent  sessions,  but  for  the  time  without  any 
lengthy  speech  and  without  any  effort  to  bring  the  ques 
tion  to  a  vote.  No  doubt  he  was  meanwhile  having  the 
subject  agitated  in  the  newspapers  in  Missouri  and  other 
States. 

The  first  occasion  on  which  he  made  an  extended 
speech  upon  the  subject  in  the  Senate  was  on  May  16, 
1826,  at  the  first  session  of  the  Nineteenth  Congress, 
upon  a  bill  he  had  introduced  similar  to  his  preceding 
ones,  and  entitled  "  a  bill  to  graduate  the  price  of  the 
public  lands."  It  did  not  contain  any  provision  for  pre 
emption,  but  proposed  successive  annual  reductions  of 
twenty-five  cents  per  acre  from  the  then  minimum  of 
one  dollar  and  a  quarter,  until  the  price  should  reach 
twenty-five  cents,  when  the  land  should  be  subject  to  gra- 


i66       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

tuitous  donations  in  tracts  of  eighty  acres;  and  it  con 
tained  also  apparently  a  provision  that  the  lands  which 
should  not  sell  at  this  price  in  five  years  should  be  ceded 
to  the  States. 

His  argument  was  that,  after  land  had  remained  un 
sold  at  the  minimum  price  then  fixed  by  law  for  a  long 
period, — which  was  the  case  as  to  large  areas, — there  was 
conclusive  evidence  that  it  was  not  worth  that  price,  and 
!  that  it  was  absurd  to  fix  the  same  arbitrary  minimum  on 
I  all  land,  when  there  was  some  far  better  than  others.  He 
contended  that  his  plan  would  bring  in  a  larger  revenue 
y  hastening  sales,  and  thus  tend  to  the  extinguishment  of 
the  public  debt  for  which  the  lands  were  pledged.  But, 
far  more  important  than  this,  it  would  tend  to  the  strength 
and  development  of  the  country  and  '''.would  largely  in 
crease  the  class  of  freeholders,  who,  in  his  opinion,  con 
stituted  its  very  backbone.  "  The  freeholder,"  he  said, 
"  is  the  natural  supporter  of  a  free  government.  .  .  . 
We  are  a  republic,  and  we  wish  to  continue  so ;  then  mul 
tiply  the  class  of  freeholders;  pass  the  public  lands 
cheaply  and  easily  into  the  hands  of  the  people;  sell  for 
a  reasonable  price  to  those  who  are  able  to  pay,  and  give 
without  price  to  those  who  are  not.  .  .  .  I  go  for  dona 
tions,  and  contend  that  no  country  under  the  sun  was 
ever  paid  for  in  gold  and  silver  before  it  could  be  settled 
and  cultivated." 

He  reminded  his  hearers  that  the  early  settlements  in 
America  had  all  been  based  on  the  plan  of  giving  the 
land  to  settlers  without  any  real  charge,  and  he  was  very 
fond  of  quoting  in  his  speeches  upon  the  subject  the  opin 
ion  of  Burke,  who  had  introduced  into  Parliament  in 
1785  a  bill  for  the  sale  of  the  crown  lands,  and  said  in  the 
debate  upon  it: 

"  Lands  sell  at  the  current  rate,  and  nothing  can  sell  for  more. 
But  be  the  price  what  it  may,  a  great  object  is  always  answered, 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  167 

whenever  any  property  is  transferred  from  hands  which  are  not  fit 
for  that  property,  to  those  that  are.  The  buyer  and  the  seller  must 
mutually  profit  by  such  a  bargain;  and,  what  rarely  happens  in 
matters  of  revenue,  the  relief  of  the  subject  will  go  hand  in  hand 
with  the  profit  of  the  Exchequer.  .  .  .  The  principal  revenue  which 
I  propose  to  draw  from  these  uncultivated  wastes,  is  to  spring  from 
the  improvement  and  population  of  the  kingdom;  events  infinitely 
more  advantageous  to  the  revenues  of  the  crown  than  the  rents  of 
the  best  landed  estate  which  it  can  hold.  ...  It  is  thus  I  would  dis 
pose  of  the  unprofitable  landed  estates  of  the  crown;  throw  them 
into  the  mass  of  private  property;  by  which  they  will  come,  through 
the  course  of  circulation,  and  through  the  political  secretions  of  the 
State,  into  well  regulated  revenue." 

Benton  contended  that  Washington  and  Hamilton 
had  in  the  early  days  advocated  a  general  system  by 
which  land  should  be  made  easy  of  acquirement,  and  he 
showed  that  Jefferson  had  urged  free  donations  to  at 
least  the  first  settlers  in  the  Louisiana  purchase.  The 
Spanish  settlements  in  America,  he  added,  had  been  made 
upon  the  like  principle,  and,  at  the  very  time  he  was 
speaking,  Canada,  Texas,  Mexico,  the  West  Indies,  and 
the  South  American  countries  generally  offered  land  for 
gratuitous  distribution  to  immigrants. 

In  accordance  with  a  method  of  which  he  was  very 
fond  throughout  his  life,  and  which  shows  how  much 
labor  he  often  bestowed  upon  the  study  of  public  ques 
tions,  he  quoted  verbatim  a  decree  of  the  Republic  of 
Colombia  upon  the  subject  and  a  recent  proclamation  of 
the  ambassador  from  the  king  of  Persia  to  England  offer 
ing  like  free  grants.  He  argued  also  that  the  ownership 
by  the  federal  government  of  large  areas  within  the 
limits  of  the  new  States  was  highly  undesirable,  deprived  N 
those  States  of  the  right  to  control  their  own  development, 
and  was  a  source  of  conflict  of  laws  and  jurisdiction ;  and 
he  desired  that  early  steps  should  be  taken  to  surrender 
the  public  lands  to  the  States  within  which  they  lay. 

This  bill  was  not  pressed  to  a  vote  by  its  author,  and 


168       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

was  laid  upon  the  table  very  soon  after  his  speech  and 
there  left.  He  did,  however,  print  a  large  edition  of  the 
speech  and  circulated  it  far  and  wide,  and  it  will  soon  be 
seen  that  about  this  time  public  sentiment  in  the  West 
was  becoming  pretty  well  aroused  upon  the  subject. 

Two  years  later,  at  the  first  session  of  the  Twentieth 
Congress,  he  again  introduced  a  bill  containing  similar 
provisions,  and  for  the  first  time  pressed  the  measure  to  a 
vote.  He  spoke  at  length  on  April  9,  1828,  but  after 
quite  a  debate  the  bill  was  lost  by  twenty-five  nays  to 
twenty-one  yeas.  At  the  first  session  of  the  Twenty-first 
Congress  he  introduced  still  another  bill,  slightly  modified 
from  the  former  ones,  and  again  made  an  earnest  effort 
to  secure  its  passage.  By  this  time  (1830)  there  were 
petitions  for  the  passage  of  the  law  from  several  States 
and  Territories,  as  well  as  from  large  numbers  of  indi 
viduals,  and  the  bill  was  evidently  thought  to  have  a  fair 
chance  of  success.  There  was  again  quite  a  debate  after 
Ben  ton  had  spoken  as  follows  :* 

.  .  .  Mr.  Benton  then  explained  the  different  sections  of  the 
bill.  He  said  that  the  bill  applied,  not  to  the  mass  or  whole  body  of 
the  public  lands,  but  to  that  part  only  which  had  been  offered  at 
one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents  per  acre,  and  could  not  find  a  pur 
chaser  at  that  price.  The  quantity  of  these  unsold  and  refuse  lands 
he  stated  at  about  seventy  millions  of  acres,  and  read  extracts  from 
the  reports  of  the  registers  and  receivers  of  the  land  offices,  to  show 
their  quality  and  average  value,  and  the  length  of  time  which  they 
had  been  in  market.  These  reports  showed  a  large  proportion  of 
these  unsold  lands  to  be  unfit  for  cultivation,  and  fixed  their  average 
prices  at  twelve  or  fifteen  cents  per  acre  in  some  districts,  and  in 
others  as  high  as  sixty  or  seventy  cents.  They  showed  that  most  of 
these  lands  had  been  a  long  time  in  market,  many  of  them  fifteen, 
twenty,  or  thirty  years,  under  the  laws  of  the  United  States;  and 
in  the  countries  acquired  by  the  Louisiana  and  Florida  treaties  they 
had  been  picked  and  culled  for  half  a  century,  and  in  some  instances 
a  whole  century,  before  they  came  into  the  hands  of  the  United 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  i,  1829-30,  pp.  405-407. 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  169 

States.  This  was  the  character  and  value  of  the  land  to  which  the 
bill  applied;  and  the  idea  was  altogether  erroneous  which  gave  it  a 
wider  scope,  and  made  it  applicable  to  the  whole  body  of  the  public 
lands.  The  terms  on  which  the  bill  proposed  to  dispose  of  this 
unsold  and  refuse  parcel  of  land  was  the  next  point  to  be  con 
sidered;  and  on  this  head  [Mr.  Benton  said]  there  wrere  two  sets 
of  provisions  contained  in  two  different  sections  and  applicable  to 
two  descriptions  of  purchasers.  The  first  set  of  provisions  was  open 
to  all  purchasers,  and  offered  the  lands  at  annual  periodical  reduc 
tions  of  price,  beginning  at  one  dollar  per  acre,  and  falling  twenty- 
five  cents  in  the  acre,  at  the  end  of  each  year,  until  the  price  fell  to 
twenty-five  cents.  The  second  set  of  provisions,  contained  in  the 
second  section,  was  intended  for  the  benefit  of  actual  settlers,  and 
gave  them  a  preference  over  general  purchasers.  The  preference 
was  secured  by  offering  to  the  actual  settler  the  privilege  of  buying 
the  land  at  twenty-five  cents  less  in  the  acre,  at  each  successive 
graduation  of  price.  .  .  . 

[After  quoting  a  report  which  he  had  had  called  for  by  the 
Senate  two  years  earlier  from  the  Department  of  State  as  to  the 
number  of  freeholders  and  non-freeholders  throughout  the  country, 
Mr.  Benton  stated  that  the  aggregate  number  of  non-freeholders] 
exceeded  one  hundred  and  forty  thousand,  and  ventured  to  affirm 
that  the  like  spectacle  was  not  to  be  seen  elsewhere  upon  the  face 
of  the  earth ;  that  there  was  not  another  country  under  the  wide 
canopy  of  heaven  in  which  a  government  having  more  land  than  it 
could  sell,  or  even  give  away  to  cultivators,  would  deprive  so  large 
a  portion  of  its  citizens  of  homes  for  themselves  and  families  by 
holding  up  refuse  and  inferior  land  for  a  price  five  times  and  ten 
times  above  its  value.  This  was  the  exact  case  with  the  Federal 
Government.  It  held  about  seventy  millions  of  acres  of  refuse  lands 
in  the  States  and  Territories,  where  these  one  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  non-freeholders  live,  and  yet  would  not  let  them  have  an; 
acre  of  it  at  its  value !  Mr.  Benton  did  not  speak  of  the  new  lands 
which  the  government  possessed,  and  which  would  come  hereafter 
into  market ;  they  amounted  to  hundreds  of  millions  of  acres,  and 
would  still  continue  to  be  sold  at  one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents 
per  acre ;  he  spoke  of  the  refuse  lands  only, — those  which  had  been 
offered  at  one  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents,  and  can  find  no  pur 
chaser.  ...  It  was  on  these  that  the  one  hundred  and  forty  thou 
sand  non-freeholders  were  chiefly  settled,  and  where  they  were 
losing  their  time  between  hope  and  fear — hoping  that  the  govern 
ment  will  reduce  the  price,  to  enable  them  to  purchase,  and  fearing 
to  make  any  beneficial  or  valuable  improvement,  lest  it  should  excite 


170       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  avarice  of  some  unprincipled  speculator  to  enter  the  land  over 
their  heads,  for  the  sake  of  the  improvement  which  had  been  put 
upon  it.  It  was  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this  large  body  of  non- 
freeholders  were  idle  and  vicious  people,  and  that  it  was  their  vice 
and  idleness  which  kept  them  too  poor  to  buy  land  at  one  dollar  and 
twenty-five  cents  per  acre.  Mr.  Benton  said  that  he  knew  better; 
he  knew  this  class  of  people  well;  he  had  travelled  among  them, 
slept  in  their  houses,  ate  at  their  tables,  and  knew  them  to  be  the 
best  of  citizens ;  men  who  did  not  think  of  living  upon  the  public,  but 
upon  their  own  labor;  whose  object  was  to  cultivate  the  earth,  and 
to  defend  it ;  who  were  industrious  farmers  at  home,  and  brave 
soldiers  in  time  of  war;  who  were  hospitable,  brave,  and  honest, 
and  merited  the  esteem  of  all  good  men,  as  well  as  the  favor  and 
protection  of  the  government.  .  .  .  These  refuse  tracts  are  not  worth 
the  present  minimum  price.  They  are  not  worth  what  the  first 
choices  were,  and  it  is  a  folly  to  ask  it,  as  much  so  as  it  would  be 
in  a  butcher  to  ask  the  same  price  for  the  shanks  and  necks  and  offal 
of  his  beef  as  he  demanded  for  the  hind-quarter. 

The  bill  was  a  good  deal  amended  during  the  discus 
sion,  and  the  clause  for  free  donations  to  settlers  and 
that  for  final  cession  to  the  States  were  both  struck  out 
upon  motions  of  Woodbury  and  Hayne,  who  were  in 
general  friends  of  the  measure.  These  amendments  were 
not  opposed  by  Benton,  nor  were  some  of  those  diminish 
ing  the  amount  of  reduction  in  the  prices  of  the  land.  The 
measure  as  finally  put  to  vote  contained  the  reduced 
provisions  for  graduation  of  the  price  of  lands  thereto 
fore  offered  for  sale,  and  gave  a  preference  to  actual 
settlers.  Benton's  colleague,  Barton,  voted  for  the  bill  in 
this  shape,  though  he  had  opposed  the  movement  in  gen 
eral  from  the  start :  he  contended  that  it  was  as  amended 
nearly  the  same  measure  he  had  in  1828  offered  as  a 
substitute  for  Benton's  bill  of  that  year. 

The  final  vote  in  the  Senate  was  twenty-four  yeas  to 
twenty-two  nays,  the  yeas  composed  exclusively  of  South 
ern  and  Western  members  and  the  nays  exclusively  of 
those  from  the  New  England  and  Middle  States,  with 
the  single  exception  that  Woodbury,  of  New  Hampshire, 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  171 

voted  with  the  majority.  The  bill  went  then  to  the  House, 
but  the  session  was  very  near  its  end  and  the  House  de 
clined  to  take  it  up. 

But  about  this  time  there  came  upon  the  stage  a  pub 
lic  policy  which  was  destined  to  gain  a  strong  popular 
support  and  which  necessarily  tended  to  stop  the  evidently 
growing  sentiment  in  favor  of  Benton's  general  land 
policy.  This  was  the  scheme  for  the  distribution  of  the 
public  revenue  among  the  States,  which  was  advocated 
for  a  number  of  years  under  varying  forms.  Introduced, 
as  the  bills  for  this  purpose  were,  with  appetizing  sched 
ules  of  distribution,  which  showed  in  figures  the  sum  of 
money  or  the  number  of  acres  of  land  that  each  State 
would  probably  receive  as  a  gift  or  under  the  specious 
guise  of  a  "  deposit,"  it  became  dangerous  for  a  public 
man  to  vote  against  them,  though  they  were  undoubtedly 
both  vicious  in  principle  and  very  harmful  in  practice. 

Benton  says  the  idea  originated  *  in  a  bill  introduced 
into  the  Senate  in  1826  by  Dickerson,  of  New  Jersey, 
which  proposed  to  divide  among  the  States,  in  the  ratio 
of  direct  taxation,  the  sum  of  five  million  dollars  annually 
for  four  years,  the  amount  to  be  taken  from  the  sum 
intended  for  the  sinking  fund.  There  seems  to  have  been 
but  little  debate  upon  this  proposition,  and  it  was  soon 
laid  on  the  table  on  Benton's  motion ;  but  the  idea  was  too 
catching  to  be  forgotten  by  politicians,  and  in  a  few  years 
was  taken  up  again  and  became  for  a  time  extremely 
popular. 

From  the  very  first,  Benton  warmly  opposed  all  the 
proposals,  partly  influenced,  no  doubt,  by  the  fact  that 


*  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  87.  Dickerson's  bill 
and  speech  are  to  be  found  in  C.  D.,  vol.  iii.,  1826-27,  pp.  209-223. 
Benton's  speech  against  it  is  not  given  there,  but  is  quoted  by  him 
in  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  86. 


1/2       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

their  success  was  almost  certain  to  stop  his  land  bills,  but 
guided  also  by  his  knowledge  as  a  statesman  that  such 
a  plan  of  doling  out  millions  to  hungry  States  by  Con 
gressional  legislation  could  not  be  otherwise  than  grossly 
demoralizing. 

As  early  as  1829,  when  the  idea  had  not  yet  been 
taken  up  as  a  leading  measure  by  one  of  the  great  parties, 
he  moved  to  reduce  the  surplus  by  cutting  off  ten  millions 
of  revenue,  and  foretold  that  the  suggested  distribution 
of  the  surplus  "  would  attract  all  eyes  and  excite  universal 
cupidity.  It  would  draw  deputations  from  cities,  towns, 
and  villages,  from  companies  and  corporations,  from 
counties,  States,  and  districts,  to  the  feet  of  the  Federal 
Government,  all  clamorous  for  their  share  of  the  spoil, 
all  neglecting  their  own  business  to  obtain  it,  and  all 
becoming  less  independent  as  they  received  it — like  the 
degenerate  Romans,  who  ceased  to  be  free  when  they 
began  to  look  to  the  public  granaries,  instead  of  their  own 
cribs,  for  a  supply  of  corn.  .  .  .  An  annual  scramble 
on  the  floors  of  Congress  for  ten  millions  of  dollars  would 
fill  our  halls  with  bargains,  combinations,  intrigue,  and 
corruption." 

More  than  one  bill  upon  the  subject  became  a  law,  and 
Jackson  recommended  the  plan  in  his  first  message  and 
even  signed  the  Act  of  1836  upon  the  subject.  This  was 
the  first  bill  passed  under  the  euphonious  name  of  a 
deposit,  and  Benton  says  that  the  President  was  later  very 
much  grieved  that  his  signature  was  at  the  foot  of  such 
a  law,  and  explains  that  he  had  acted  under  the  advice 
of  some  friends  of  Van  Buren,  who  feared  the  political 
effect  of  a  veto  of  so  popular  a  measure. 

Benton  seems  never  once  to  have  faltered,  was  one 
of  a  paltry  minority  of  six  Senators  (against  forty)  who 
voted  against  the  bill  of  1836,  and  he  repeatedly  spoke 
and  voted  against  bills — when  there  was  not  the  ghost  of 
a  chance  of  defeating  them — with  a  view  to  educate  the 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  173 

people  and  thus  prevent  the  plan  from  becoming  perma 
nent.  He  charged  that  federal  payments  actually  due 
were  more  than  once  withheld  and  appropriations  neces 
sary  to  the  proper  management  of  public  affairs  delayed 
in  order  to  make  an  apparently  large  surplus  and  thus 
show  a  tempting  mass  for  distribution;  and  late  in  the 
history  of  the  matter  he  charged  *  that  the  efforts  then 
making  were  largely  inspired  from  abroad,  and  that  "  two 
lobby  members  from  London  .  .  .  had  done  them  the 
honor  to  attend  at  the  extra  session"  of  1841,  with  the 
hope  of  inducing  the  United  States  thus  indirectly  to  pay 
the  debts  of  the  States  to  foreigners,  which  were  then  in 
arrears. 

As  has  been  already  said,  the  policy  prevailed  for  a 
time,  and  several  rich  morsels  of  surplus  were  doled  out  to 
the  States ;  but  it  was  not  many  years  before  the  federal 
treasury  saw  bankruptcy  close  at  hand,  if  laws  then  on  the 
statute-book  and  directing  distribution  were  carried  out, 
and  an  ignominious  retreat  had  to  be  called  and  these 
laws  repealed.  The  money,  moreover,  which  had  been 
so  lavished  on  the  States  was  by  no  means  devoted  to 
such  laudable  purposes  as  paying  debts,  but  was  squan 
dered  in  a  thousand  extravagant  and  useless  schemes, 
and  was,  in  Benton's  opinion,  a  positive  evil  to  the 
States  themselves. 

In  some  it  led  to  extravagant  plans  of  internal  im 
provement  calling  for  ever-greater  sums,  and  thus  sad 
dled  them  with  a  nearly  hopeless  debt;  while  in  all  its 

*  This  was  by  no  means  a  mere  charge.  See  View,  ii.,  pp.  171, 
etc.,  217.  John  Quincy  Adams  was  called  upon  by  the  bondholders' 
agent  and  evidently  favored  the  plan ;  he  had  some  idea  that  it  was 
the  constitutional  duty  of  the  United  States  to  compel  the  States — 
he  does  not  say  how — to  pay  these  debts,  because  they  might  be 
called  upon  to  defend  the  States  in  case  of  a  war  made  upon  us  by 
a  foreign  country  on  account  of  the  repudiation.  Diary,  xi.,  pp.  288, 
315,  317,  320-323,  331- 


174       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

disposal  was  attended  by  the  dickering  and  the  selfish 
designs  which  seem  to  be  necessary  incidents  in  such 
cases.  Some  States  even  refused  for  a  long  time  to 
accept  their  share  of  the  plunder  and  censured  the  authors 
of  the  act,  and  some  divided  the  amount  per  capita  among 
their  citizens,  when  the  share  of  each  person  was  but  a 
paltry  sum  and  "was  received  with  contempt  by  some 
and  rejected  with  scorn  by  others." 

The  whole  history  of  this  once  so  popular  policy  is 
most  instructive  and  ought  to  be  a  clear  enough  lesson  to 
prevent  the  American  people  from  ever  again  advocating 
the  raising  of  money  by  taxation  of  the  people  with  one 
hand  and  then  returning  it  to  them  with  the  other.  Ben- 
ton's  course  was  certainly  in  a  high  degree  statesman 
like,  and  his  persistent  opposition  to  bills  in  the  face  of 
hopeless  majorities  must  have  had  a  great  influence  in 
leading  to  the  final  abandonment  of  the  policy. 

On  January  24,  1833,  he  complained  that  those  who 
opposed  the  distribution  schemes  had  had  their  votes 
used  against  them  in  the  elections :  he  had  himself  been 
re-elected  in  Missouri,  "although  it  had  been  carefully 
spread  in  all  directions  that  he  had  deprived  her  of  a  gift 
of  five  hundred  thousand  acres  of  land  and  two  large 
dividends  of  money/'  And  on  another  occasion,  when  he 
thought  bills  of  vast  importance  were  shoved  aside  so  as 
to  have  the  treasury  books  show  a  large  surplus  for  dis 
tribution,  he  denounced  the  measure  as  "  the  pestilence 
of  legislation,"  and  said  "  it  was  to  the  business  of  the 
Senate  what  the  curse  of  frogs  was  in  Egypt," — just  as 
he  will  be  found  saying  again  some  years  later  as  to 
another  subject  which  came  to  be  forever  under  discus 
sion,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  to  the  detriment  of 
public  business  and  the  peril  of  the  Union.* 

*  Benton's  speech  in  1829  foretelling  the  lobbying  that  distribu 
tion  would  lead  to  is  in  C  D.,  vol.  v.,  1828-29,  p.  21.  For  his  course 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  175 

Down  to  the  time  when  this  new  plan  came  upon  the 
stage  of  public  affairs,  the  efforts  of  Benton  and  his 
associates  to  amend  the  land  laws  had  by  no  means  been 
without  success.  In  1828  an  act  had  been  passed  to  sell 
the  mineral  and  saline  lands  in  Missouri,  which  had  all 
been  theretofore  withheld  from  sale  and  merely  leased  by 
the  United  States,  and  there  was  an  important  act  passed 
in  1830  granting  pre-emption  to  certain  persons;  but  it, 
as  well  as  several  similar  laws  of  the  following  decade, 
were  only  temporary  and  held  out  no  offer  whatsoever  to 
future  settlers. 

Towards  the  end  of  that  decade,  though  Benton  had 
continued  to  introduce  and  advocate  various  measures  in 
regard  to  the  public  lands,  he  was  evidently  nearly  in 
despair  for  the  time  being,  and  said  it  would  be  necessary 
to  wait  till  the  new  census  should  come  into  operation  and 
augment  the  power  of  the  Western  States.  But  near  the 
end  of  the  Twenty-sixth  Congress,  in  the  beginning  of 
1841,  a  bill  introduced  by  him  to  establish  a  permanent 
system  of  pre-emption  passed  the  Senate  by  the  decisive 
vote  of  thirty-one  to  nineteen,  but  again  failed,  on  account 
of  the  lateness  of  the  session,  to  be  called  up  in  the  House 
for  concurrence. 

The  next  Congress  was  strongly  Whig,  and  to  it  be 
longs  the  credit  of  having  passed  the  first  permanent  pre 
emption  law,  but  it  was  surely  the  irony  of  fate  that  the 
law  was  put  in  such  a  shape  that  Benton  could  not  pos 
sibly  vote  for  it.  Its  primary  and  chief  object  was  the 
distribution  of  the  revenue  from  land  sales  among  the 
States,  while  some  of  its  clauses  did  enact  for  the  first 


in  general  on  the  distribution  and  deposit  plans,  see,  e.g.,  C.  D.,  vol. 
xii.,  part  2,  1835-36,  pp.  1388,  1394.  Ibid.,  xiii.,  part  2,  1836-37,  pp. 
100-107.  C  G.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  28-31.  Ibid.,  26th 
Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  85-93.  Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  1st  Sess., 
appendix,  pp.  228-231.  See  also  View,  i.,  pp.  649-658;  ii.,  pp.  39,  417. 


i  ;6       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

time  a  permanent  system  by  which  the  actual  settler  in 
the  future  as  well  as  the  past  was  entitled  to  the  first 
right  to  buy  the  public  land  at  the  fixed  price. 

One  other  law  upon  the  general  subject  which  was 
pressed  by  Benton  for  some  years,  and  with  final  success, 
must  be  considered.  When  the  Indian  war  in  Florida  had 
gone  on  for  a  number  of  years  and  all  organized  bands 
of  the  savages  had  been  in  the  main  subdued  by  the  army, 
small  roving  parties  still  continued  at  times  to  come  out 
from  their  well-nigh  impenetrable  hiding-places  and  make 
sudden  and  murderous  attacks  on  small  localities. 

To  prevent  this  and  build  up  against  them  a  settled 
area  under  the  protection  of  backwoodsmen  armed  with 
rifles,  Benton  introduced  at  the  third  session  of  the 
Twenty-fifth  Congress,  in  1838-39,  "a  bill  providing 
for  the  armed  occupation  and  settlement  of  Florida," 
under  the  provisions  of  which  a  bounty  of  three  hundred 
and  twenty  acres  of  land  was  to  be  offered  to  settlers  up 
to  the  number  of  ten  thousand  who  should  move  and  live 
there  under  certain  terms  as  to  stay  and  military  service. 

He  contended  that  "  armed  occupation,  with  land  to 
the  occupant,  was  the  true  way  of  settling  and  holding  a 
conquered  country,"  and  was  the  way  which  had  been 
found  successful  in  all  history.  His  bill  passed  the  Senate 
but  was  not  reached  in  the  House,  and  was  introduced  by 
him  again  at  the  first  session  of  the  next  Congress,  but 
again  failed  to  pass.  It  met  a  great  deal  of  opposition 
from  the  anti-slavery  agitators,  who  wanted  no  other 
reason  for  voting  against  a  measure  to  stop  the  ruthless 
slaughter  of  their  fellow-countrymen  than  that  it  would 
"have  the  effect  of  increasing  the  slave-holding  interest." 

At  length,  in  1842,  at  the  second  session  of  the 
Twenty-seventh  Congress,  his  efforts  met  with  success, 
and  a  bill  he  had  introduced  became  a  law  by  the  Presi 
dent's  approval  on  August  4.  In  this  statute  his  plan  was 
a  good  deal  amended,  but  in  the  main  it  was  his  idea.  A 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  177 

bounty  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  was  offered  to 
settlers  who  should  go  and  establish  themselves,  under 
carefully  guarded  terms  as  to  residence  and  cultivation. 

Lender  this  act  and  certain  amendments  the  official 
records  show  that  one  thousand  three  hundred  and  seven 
teen  entries  were  made,  aggregating  slightly  over  two 
hundred  thousand  acres  (the  full  amount  allowed  by  the 
act  to  be  entered),  and  it  was  the  first  donation  act  in  our 
history  intended  to  induce  settlements  on  distant  or  dan 
gerous  parts  of  the  public  domain.  Its  principle  has 
since  been  applied  in  other  cases,  and  Benton  said  in  the 
House  on  February  27,  1855,  tna^  the  act  was  a  complete 
success  and  rapidly  brought  to  an  end  the  ravages  from 
Indian  excursions  which  had  persisted  for  so  many  years. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  in  detail  the  other  acts 
in  regard  to  the  public  lands  which  Benton  introduced 
during  the  remainder  of  his  public  service,  but  some  of 
them  must  be  slightly  noticed.  In  1850-51,  during  the 
last  Congress  in  which  he  sat  in  the  Senate,  he  introduced 
a  bill  to  graduate  the  price  by  successive  reductions  until 
it  reached  twenty-five  cents  per  acre,  when  it  should  be 
ceded  to  the  States;  and  in  this  bill  he  incorporated  a 
provision  to  give  outright  forty  acres  to  an  actual  settler 
and  accord  him  a  pre-emption  right  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty  acres  adjoining  at  a  price  twenty-five  cents  below 
that  at  which  the  same  land  could  be  purchased  by  the 
general  public.  And  at  this  same  session  one  of  his 
bills  for  a  Highway  to  the  Pacific  provided  for  a  dona 
tion  outright — or  "homestead,"  as  it  is  now  universally 
called — of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  to  settlers  upon 
the  line  of  the  highway. 

In  1853-54,  at  the  first  session  of  the  Thirty-third 
Congress,  when  he  was  a  member  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  a  bill  was  introduced  into  both  Houses  under 
the  actual  name  of  a  "  homestead  bill,"  and  passed  both 
branches  in  some  shape;  but  the  two  Houses  failed  to 

13 


i;8       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

agree  upon  the  amendments.  There  seems  to  be  no 
evidence  that  this  bill  was  introduced  at  his  instance,  but 
he  of  course  voted  for  it.  This  last  Congress  in  which  he 
served  also  passed  a  graduation  act  by  which  the  prices 
of  public  lands  were  fixed  to  actual  settlers  at  prices  vary 
ing  from  one  dollar  to  twelve  and  a  half  cents,  according 
to  the  length  of  time  the  land  had  been  in  the  market. 
Under  this  act  the  enormous  aggregate  of  not  far  from 
twenty-six  millions  of  acres  had  been  entered  by  the  year 
1881. 

Thus,  though  in  his  early  days — as  he  himself  said  in 
the  Senate  on  January  4,  1841,  of  his  efforts  as  to  the 
land  laws — "his  solitary  voice  was  overpowered  .  .  . 
and  his  bills  were  treated  as  preposterous,  absurd,  and 
impracticable  measures,"  yet  the  end  of  his  career  in  the 
federal  councils  saw  the  bulk  of  those  principles  for  which 
he  had  contended  enacted  into  laws  and  permanently  on 
the  statute-book. 

The  mineral  lands  long  reserved  from  sale  and  leased 
under  a  mistaken  idea  that  the  federal  government 
would  in  this  way  enjoy  a  large  profit  from  them  were, 
in  part  at  least,  turned  over  to  that  individual  ownership 
by  which  alone  they  could  be  made  a  source  of  income. 
The  poorer  parts  of  the  public  lands  were  no  longer 
arbitrarily  fixed  at  the  same  price  at  which  the  best  lands 
had  been  taken  years  before,  but  were  gradually  reduced 
as  the  years  rolled  by  without  their  finding  a  purchaser. 
And  the  hardly  actual  settler,  who  went  ever  westward 
carrying  with  him  the  might  and  the  future  of  the  coun 
try,  was  no  longer  treated  as  a  trespasser  and  criminal, 
but  was  accorded  that  right  to  purchase  in  preference  to 
any  one  else  which  Benton  had  demanded  for  him  in  the 
Tennessee  Senate  in  1809.  And  within  a  few  years  after 
his  death,  the  steadily  growing  sentiment  in  favor  of 
liberal  legislation  upon  the  subject  led  to  the  passage  in 
1862  of  a  homestead  law  under  which  an  actual  settler 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  179 

could  take  up  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  almost  free  of 
cost. 

The  portion  of  his  contention  which  has  had  the 
least  success  is  that  for  the  ultimate  cession  of  the  lands 
to  the  States  in  which  they  lay.  This  idea  has  been 
thought  by  some  to  have  been  the  main  purpose  at  which 
he  aimed,  but  such  was  by  no  means  the  case.  His  con 
trolling  object  was  to  render  settlement  easy  by  en 
couraging  people  to  come  with  the  promise  of  con 
veying  farms  of  suitable  size  to  them,  and  the  plan  of 
cessions  to  the  States  was  entirely  left  out  of  some  bills 
and  in  no  case  applied,  except  to  lands  which  had  been 
long  in  the  market  without  finding  a  purchaser.  He  did 
advocate  in  a  number  of  particular  instances,  and  not  in 
frequently  with  success,  cessions  of  special  tracts  to  the 
States  for  some  purpose  of  public  improvement,  and  was, 
for  example,  a  supporter  of  the  bill  introduced  in  1848— 
49  to  make  such  a  cession  to  Florida  to  enable  her  to 
have  the  Everglades  drained.* 

As  was  to  be  expected,  Benton  was  charged  with 
advocating  his  land  measures  from  purely  partisan  pur 
poses  and  to  secure  his  re-election  to  the  Senate,  absurd 
and  utterly  untenable  though  this  view  was,  when  we 

*  C.  G.,  20th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  91.  The  following  references 
comprise  some  of  the  most  important  proceedings  on  Benton's  land 
bills :  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.,  part  i,  1825-26,  pp.  720-753.  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.,  part  I, 
1827-28,  pp.  483-497,  609-629.  678.  Ibid.,  vol.  vi.,  part  I,  1829-30,  pp. 
405-408,  427.  Ibid.,  vol.  xiii.,  part  I,  1836-37,  pp.  750-752.  C.  G.,  25th 
Cong.,  2d  Sess..  appendix,  pp.  291-294.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
pp.  14,  15.  Ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  20,  21,  58-61.  View,  i.,  pp.  12,  102- 
107.  Much  aid  can  also  be  derived  from  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  The 
Public  Domain,"  published  by  authority  of  the  Forty-sixth  Congress 
at  its  third  session,  and  constituting  Ex.  Doc.  47,  part  4,  House  of 
Representatives.  For  the  Florida  armed  occupation  bill,  see  C.  G., 
25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  162-165.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  71-74.  Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  503,  618, 
619,  818.  View,  i.,  p.  102;  ii.,  pp.  70,  167-171. 


180       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

consider  the  long  history  of  his  opinions  and  actions  upon 
the  subject.  John  Quincy  Adams,  for  instance,  who 
never  shook  off  the  feeling  of  his  section  and  looked 
upon  the  lands  merely  as  a  source  of  revenue  by  their 
sale,  could  see  nothing  in  Benton's  move  but  a  bid  for 
popularity;  and  he  was,  moreover,  inspired  with  some 
idea  that  its  success  would  be  very  dangerous  to  the 
Union.  He  wrote*  in  1828  that  he  was  in  great  concern 
for  "  the  prospects  of  the  country — the  threats  of  dis 
union  from  the  South,  and  the  graspings  after  all  the 
public  lands  which  are  disclosing  themselves  in  the  West 
ern  States." 

Probably  the  real  first  cause  of  his  fear  was  that  at 
about  that  time  the  East  was  entertaining  hopes  of  draw 
ing  the  West  away  from  its  close  political  union  with  the 
South,  and  the  popularity  of  Benton's  plans  threatened 
to  dash  these  hopes.  Much  of  the  politics  of  the  day  re 
volved  around  the  efforts  of  the  East  and  the  South  to 
secure  the  Western  vote,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  proposal  to  distribute  the  surplus  revenue  among  the 
States  was  in  good  part  a  count ermove  to  check  the 
growing  sentiment  in  the  West  in  favor  of  Benton's  land 
laws.  It  proposed  accordingly  to  give  an  extra  portion 
of  the  proceeds  to  those  States  in  w'hich  the  lands  lay. 

The  famous  debate  which  sprang  up  in  1830  over 
Foot's  resolution  is  another  instance  of  the  same  struggle 
between  the  old  sections,  and  is  full  to  repletion  of  claims 
by  both  that  it  was  and  always  had  been  the  friend  of 
the  West  and  that  the  other  side  was  endeavoring  with 
false  promises  to  seduce  the  young  giant  from  its  natu 
ral  ally.  Introduced,  as  the  measure  was,  by  a  mem 
ber  from  Connecticut,  defended  almost  entirely  by  East 
ern  men,  and  proposing,  as  it  did,  to  limit  for  a  time  the 
sales  of  the  public  lands  exclusively  to  those  already  in 


Diary,  viii.,  pp.  87,  88;    and  see  ibid.,  vii.,  pp.  187,  188. 


SALT    TAX    AND    LAND    LAWS  181 

the  market,  and  even  to  abolish  the  office  of  surveyor- 
general,  it  is  no  wonder  that  Benton  recognized  its  ten 
dency  to  stop  entirely  his  land  bills  and  to  delay  enor 
mously  the  growth  of  the  West,  and  from  the  very  start 
hotly  opposed  it. 

Webster,  in  one  of  his  wonderful  orations  upon  the 
subject  in  reply  to  Hayne,  reviewed  parts  of  the  history 
of  the  treatment  of  the  West  by  the  South  and  the  East, 
and  made  claims  of  a  tender  devotion  to  the  new  section 
on  behalf  of  the  East  such  as  only  an  orator  of  his  power 
would  have  had  the  audacious  effrontery  to  advance.  Ben- 
ton  at  once  began  an  answer  to  this  speech,  but,  after  he 
had  proceeded  for  some  time,  yielded  the  floor  to  Hayne, 
and  there  then  ensued  that  famous  debate  between  Hayne 
and  \Vebster  which  must  forever  illustrate  the  palmiest 
days  of  the  American  Senate. 

After  the  close  of  this  episode  Benton  resumed  and 
spoke  for  parts  of  four  days.  He  reviewed  at  length  and 
\vith  care,  citing  the  documents  in  proof  of  his  allega 
tions,  the  question  which  section  had  been  the  early  friend 
of  the  West,  and  demonstrated  conclusively  that  Web 
ster's  claims  for  the  East  were  absurdly  unfounded.  The 
value  of  Benton's  speeches  is  often  to  be  found  in  their 
historical  research,  and  the  student  will  still  find  here  a 
mass  of  evidence  collected  upon  this  subject. 

Benton  had  in  reality  spoken  a  good  deal  of  this  speech 
before  he  gave  way  to  Hayne,  but  \Vebster  made  no  pre 
tence  of  answering  him, — a  fact  which  led  to  the  side- 
play  of  Hayne's  charging  that  Webster  feared  Benton 
as  an  "  over-match  for  him"  and  therefore  poured  out 
the  vials  of  his  oratory  on  Hayne.  Wrebster  the  orator 
needed  to  fear  no  man,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
he  gladly  avoided  touching  the  mass  of  evidence  Benton 
had  brought  forward,  and  sought  instead  to  overwhelm 
with  his  ponderous  artillery  Hayne's  opinions  as  to  the 
nature  and  character  of  our  government.  I  shall  quote 


182       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  following  from  Benton's  chief  speech  as  a  sample  of 
his  lighter  method  in  debate.  It  was  in  reply  to  an  ora 
torical  extravagance  of  Webster  in  regard  to  Nathan 
Dane: 

".  .  .  He  has  brought  before  us  a  certain  Nathan  Dane,  of 
Beverly,  Massachusetts,  and  loaded  him  with  such  an  exuberance  of 
blushing  honors  as  no  modern  name  has  been  known  to  merit  or  to 
claim.  Solon,  Lycurgus,  and  Numa  Pompilius  are  the  renowned 
legislators  of  antiquity  to  whom  he  is  compared,  and  only  compared 
for  the  purpose  of  being  placed  at  their  head.  So  much  glory  was 
earned  by  a  single  act,  and  that  act,  the  supposed  authorship  of  the 
ordinance  of  1787,  for  the  government  of  the  Northwestern  Terri 
tory,  and  especially  of  the  clause  in  it  which  prohibits  slavery  and 
involuntary  servitude  .  .  .  [after  reciting  the  history  of  the  ordi 
nance  to  show  that  Dane  was  not  its  author].  So  passes  away  the 
glory  of  this  world.  But  yesterday  the  name  of  Nathan  Dane,  of 
Beverly,  Massachusetts,  hung  in  equipoise  against  half  the  names  of 
the  sages  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Poetry  and  eloquence  were  at  work 
to  blazon  his  fame ;  marble,  and  brass,  and  history,  and  song  were 
waiting  to  perform  their  office.  The  celestial  honors  of  the  apotheo 
sis  seemed  to  be  only  deferred  for  the  melancholy  event  of  the 
sepulchre.  To-day  all  this  superstructure  of  honors,  human  and 
divine,  disappears  from  the  earth.  The  foundation  of  the  edifice  is 
sapped ;  and  the  superhuman  glories  of  him  who,  twenty-four 
hours  ago,  was  taking  his  station  among  the  demigods  of  antiquity, 
have  dispersed  and  dissipated  into  thin  air — vanishing  like  the  base 
less  fabric  of  a  vision,  which  leaves  not  a  rack  behind."  * 

*  C.   D.,  vol.   vi.,  part   i,   1829-30,  p.  96. 


CHAPTER    XII 

OUR    EARLY    FINANCIAL    HISTORY — THE    UNITED    STATES 

BANK GENERAL        DISLIKE        AND        DISTRUST        OF, 

THROUGHOUT    THE    WEST ORIGIN    AND    GROWTH    OF 

THIS      FEELING ABSURDITY      OF      VIEW      OFTEN      AD 
VANCED  AS  TO  CAUSE  OF  JACKSON'S  HOSTILITY THE 

WESTERN    DEMOCRACY EARLY    MOVES    AGAINST    THE 

BANK 

AT  the  same  time  that  Benton  was  making  some  of 
his  efforts  in  the  contests  which  we  have  been  consider 
ing,  he  was  also  engaged  in  one  of  the  most  momentous 
struggles  of  his  career.  Not  in  favor  of  Jackson  for  the 
presidency  during  the  popular  campaign  in  1824,  it  has 
been  seen  that  he  came  to  the  General's  support  later, 
when  the  election  was  thrown  into  the  House  and  Clay 
ceased  to  be  eligible;  and  probably  from  that  time  on 
he  was  a  Jackson  man  and  concerned  in  the  many  move 
ments  to  bring  him  into  the  presidency. 

In  a  few  years  they  became  close  friends,  and  Benton 
wrote  *  Jackson  on  February  28,  1828,  giving  some  de 
tails  of  the  hopes  entertained  by  himself,  Calhoun,  and 
other  advocates  of  the  General,  and  showing  no  little 
insight  into  events  then  a  year  and  more  ahead :  "  We 
believe,"  he  wrote,  "  that  the  debt  can  be  paid  in  Jackson's 
administration,  and  duties  on  comforts  and  necessaries 
to  a  large  amount  abolished,  and  that  without  touching 
the  manufacturing  interests.  Jefferson  gained  a  great 
part  of  his  glory  by  abolishing  two  millions  of  taxes.  I 
think  we  shall  abolish  ten  or  twelve  millions/'  And  when 
a  year  later  Jackson  entered  upon  his  remarkable  presi- 

*  Letter  in  the  Jackson  Correspondence  in  Library  of  Congress. 

183 


184       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

dency,  he  found  one  of  his  strongest  supporters  in  Benton. 
Of  the  numerous  policies  which  marked  the  eight  years  of 
our  history  which  we  are  about  to  enter  upon,  one  stands 
pre-eminent  and  must  be  first  examined  here. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  questions  involved  in  the 
struggle  between  Jackson  and  the  bank  have  been  sub 
jects  of  such  bitter  controversy  that  it  is  to-day  impossible, 
and  is  likely  ever  to  remain  so,  to  get  people  to  come  to 
anything  approaching  an  agreement  of  opinion.  The  one 
side  can  see  little  in  the  bank  but  an  institution  guided 
at  all  times  by  the  worst  of  motives,  and  the  other  side 
forever  paint  the  President  as  impelled  from  start  to 
finish  by  motives  of  mere  jealousy  and  spleen,  and  in 
spired  primarily  by  blind  rage  at  being  curbed  in  his  de 
sire  to  dispense  patronage. 

Still,  the  contest  must  be  treated  here  at  some  length ; 
for  the  subject  of  this  book  took  an  enormous  part  in  the 
memorable  struggle.  Posterity  may  think  that  he  showed 
even  more  truly  the  great  man  when  late  in  his  career  he 
flatly  refused  to  follow  the  trend  of  public  opinion  in  his 
State  and  adhered  to  his  own  view  of  what  was  right 
until  all  his  political  power  crumbled  to  pieces;  but  it 
,was  undoubtedly  during  the  days  of  the  bank  struggle 
'that  he  attained  the  zenith  of  his  power  and  fame  on 
the  stage  of  public  events. 

\  In  their  short  history  the  American  people  have  had 
many  terrible  experiences  of  the  evils  of  irredeemable 
paper  money,  and  yet  large  numbers  have  not  learned  the 
lesson  of  its  dangers.  On  the  other  hand,  some  have 
imbibed  such  a  horror  of  the  very  idea  that  they  fly  from 
it  as  from  poison  and  want  all  business  conducted  on 
specie  alone.  The  paper-money  experiences  of  the  Rev 
olution  made  a  deep  impression  on  most  of  the  statesmen 
who  founded  our  country,  and  it  is  more  than  likely  that 
among  the  lessons  of  Benton's  very  early  days  were  some 
reminiscences  upon  the  subject  recounted  by  older  men. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  185 

Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  there  is  clear  proof  that  his 
early  maturity  found  him  inspired  with  that  dislike  and 
jealousy  of  banks  and  banking  which  his  later  life  showed 
and  which  was  highly  characteristic  of  the  regions  in 
which  he  passed  the  years  of  early  manhood. 

The  West — a  new  country  without  capital  and  need 
ing  large  sums  for  its  development — felt,  as  the  newer 
parts  of  the  country  have  felt  in  our  day,  that  it  was 
bled  by  the  "money-power"  of  the  older  regions;  and, 
when  at  intervals  the  bubble  of  apparent  prosperity  broke 
and  many  were  pushed  to  the  wall  by  far-off  creditors 
across  the  mountains,  it  was  in  human  nature  that  finan 
cial  institutions,  and  especially  the  largest  and  most 
powerful  one,  should  come  to  be  looked  upon  with  eyes 
of  jealousy  and  distrust. 

The  first  Bank  of  the  United  States  had  its  part  in 
creating  these  feelings,  and  from  at  least  the  early  years 
of  the  century  the  prevailing  sentiment  in  the  West  was 
beyond  all  question  strongly  opposed  to  a  national  bank. 
This  is  a  cardinal  point  to  be  borne  in  mind  in  studying 
the  history  of  the  second  bank's  downfall,  and  it  is  in 
structive  in  the  connection  to  observe  that  in  1811  Clay 
based  his  opposition  to  rechartering  the  first  bank  on 
reasons  which  most  curiously  anticipate  Jackson's  veto 
of  1832. 

Not  only  did  he  inveigh  against  the  bank's  claim  to 
enter  a  State  without  leave  and  yet  be  exempt  from  tax 
ation,  but  he  found  another  cause  of  complaint  in  the 
large  proportion  of  its  capital  owned  by  foreigners,  and 
declaimed  against  it  as  "  a  splendid  association  of  favored 
individuals,  taken  from  the  mass  of  society  and  invested 
with  exemptions  and  surrounded  by  immunities." 

All  these  objections  can  be  found  almost  in  words  in 
Jackson's  veto  of  twenty-one  years  later,  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  Clay's  views  represented  very  fairly  the 
prevailing  opinion  in  1811  of  the  people  of  the  Southwest, 


1 86       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

— that  bold  and  boastful  democracy  whose  influence  upon 
our  development  came  in  a  few  years  to  be  so  enormous, 
but  which  has  been,  unfortunately,  far  too  little  studied. 
They  were  deeply  inspired  with  the  feeling  of  State  rights 
and  greatly  disliked  to  see  the  vast  federal  money  engine 
enter  their  State  at  will. 

Clay's  speech  is  said  *  to  have  fixed  Jackson's  mind 
against  the  idea  of  a  national  bank  when  he  was  still  a 
comparatively  young  man,  and  it  is  probable  that  Benton, 
too, — then  a  close  friend  of  Jackson  and  a  connection  of 
Clay, — became  inspired  at  the  same  time  with  a  like  feel 
ing  of  distrust  and  jealousy  of  the  power  of  enormous 
moneyed  institutions. 

The  main  causes  of  this  feeling  that  was  thus  so  preva 
lent  throughout  the  West  were  undoubtedly  that  dislike 
of  privilege  and  mistrust  of  power  which  are  character 
istic  of  all  democracy.  The  Western  Democrats  felt  that 
a  vast  bank,  situated  miles  away  from  their  home  and 
with  branches  scattered  over  the  country,  all  subject  to 
the  orders  of  one  central  authority,  must  wield  a  danger 
ous  influence  upon  the  life  of  every  citizen.  The  president 
and  the  few  officers  managing  the  bank  seemed  to  be 
clothed  under  the  forms  of  law  with  special  opportunities 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  the  vast  federal  revenue 
constantly  in  their  hands  was  alone  a  fund  enormous  be 
yond  the  dreams  of  avarice  in  that  day. 

The  Democracy  did  not  want  any  institution  to  exist 
of  enormous  power  for  good  or  for  evil,  and  particularly 
not  one  separate  and  apart  from  essential  governmental 
agencies;  they  were  convinced,  as  were  the  founders  of 
the  republic,  that  power  is  dangerous  and  cannot  be 
trusted.  This  is  one  of  those  instincts  which  some  men 
have,  while  others  have  not,  but  rather  long  to  create  such 


*  Parton's  Jackson,  ii.,  p.  654.     Charles  H.   Peck's  Jacksonian 
Epoch,  p.  168. 


THE   UNITED    STATES    BANK  187 

stupendous  agencies  and  then  to  bask  in  their  sunshine; 
but  no  one  can  fail  to  recognize  the  existence  of  the  feel 
ing,  nor  that  it  had  exerted  a  controlling  influence  at 
the  foundation  of  our  government.  It  was  undoubtedly 
at  bottom  this  same  instinct  of  those  early  days  that  was 
now  about  to  lead  the  Western  Democracy  to  oppose  the 
continuance  of  the  United  States  Bank. 

But  the  purely  instinctive  feeling  was  by  no  means 
all.  These  men  had  at  times  felt,  or  undoubtedly  thought 
they  had  felt,  the  opposition  and  oppression  of  the  bank. 

I  Many  writers  deny  this,  but  it  would  be  a  case  of  such 
self-denial  as  the  world  hardly  shows,  if  the  bank  did 
not  at  times  exert  an  iron  hand  to  carry  through  its  gen 
eral  policy  and  in  so  doing  crush  some  individuals  and 
localities. 

!  This  is  one  of  those  things  which  are  hardly  susceptible 
of  proof,  any  more  than  is,  in  general,  the  influence  of 
modern  corporations  on  legislative  bodies,  but  neither  can 
be  seriously  doubted.  An  institution  whose  president 
claimed  for  it  the  power  to  destroy  any  bank  in  the  coun-x 
try  may  well  never  once  have  exercised  this  power,  but  it 
is  equally  clear  that  the  minor  institutions  could  not  dare 
to  follow  their  own  course  in  opposition  to  it.  The  mere 
existence  of  such  a  power  of  life  and  death  in  the  hands 
of  one  corporation  would  have  been  enough  to  compel 
that  absolute  obedience  which  tradition  says  was  rendered 
to  the  United  States  Bank,  and  here  alone  was  ample 
cause  for  a  jealous  and  suspicious  Democracy  to  aim  to 
tear  down  that  vast  body. 

The  first  Bank  of  the  United  States  had  gone  out  of 
existence  in  1811,  and  for  six  years  the  country  was  then 
based  upon  State  institutions.  During  this  period  there 
was  a  vast  deal  of  reckless  and  dishonest  financiering,  and  u- 
banks  were  created  with  such  profusion  that  the  term 
"  litter"  was  several  times  applied  to  the  batches  of  new 
ones  authorized  by  the  wholesale  by  the  legislatures. 


188       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

The  consequence  was  that  the  country  was  flooded 
with  debased  paper  money,  and  Pennsylvania  alone  had 
in  1817  forty-eight  chartered  banks,  twenty-two  unlawful 
and  unchartered  ones,  and  thirty-nine  private  individuals, 
all  engaged  in  the  business  of  issuing  notes,  while  "  shin- 
plasters"  issued  by  bridge  and  other  companies,  by  city 
and  borough  authorities,  and  by  merchants,  tavern-keep 
ers,  barbers,  and  shoe-blacks,  are  said  to  have  circulated 
in  vast  numbers,  ranging  in  value  from  three  cents  to  two 
dollars.*  The  war  with  England,  too,  came  during  this 
period,  and  at  its  close  the  finances  of  the  country  were  in 
an  awful  state,  with  specie  payments  suspended  and  with 
thousands  of  dollars  of  worthless  bank  promises  to  pay 
floating  about. 

This  state  of  affairs  led  to  the  charter  in  1816  of  the 
second  Bank  of  the  United  States,  against  the  govern 
mental  opinions  of  the  party  in  power,  but  under  the  stern 
compulsion  of  one  of  those  conditions  before  which  the 
abstract  constitutional  views  of  all  but  the  most  deter 
mined  give  way.  The  new  institution  went  into  operation 
in  1817,  and  its  exertions  contributed  largely  to  a  return 
to  specie  payments  early  in  that  year,  but  this  result  was 
brought  about  only  by  a  degree  of  pressure  on  the  State 
banks  which  at  once  excited  their  hostility. 

It  must  be  noted  that,  despite  the  disorders  of  the  cur 
rency  prevailing  after  the  close  of  the  war,  it  was  a  period 
of  apparent  prosperity.  A  "  boom"  of  flush  times  was 
running  its  feverish  course,  and  every  one  was  eagerly 
buying  at  the  most  extravagant  prices  whatever  he  could 
lay  his  hands  on,  with  the  result  that  men  worth  in  reality 
next  to  nothing  were  the  nominal  owners  of  vast  tracts 
of  land  and  other  property,  their  ownership  based  on  mere 
promises  to  pay  which  could  not  possibly  be  met. 

The  flush  times  continued  for  a  few  years  after  the 

*McMaster's  United  States,  iv.,  pp.  307,  308;    317,  318. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  189 

creation  of  the  second  Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  new 
institutions  were  still  created  in  profusion,  so  that  in  1818 
there  were  three  hundred  and  ninety-two  banks  in  the 
country.  Warnings  had  been  uttered  now  and  then,  but 
remained  unheeded,  and  finally  the  crash  started  in  the 
latter  part  of  1818,  and  soon  all  over  the  country  banks 
were  suspending  payment  and  unhappy  debtors  were 
rapidly  going  to  the  wall. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  reckless  bank  manage 
ment  of  the  time  had  contributed  enormously  to  the  over 
grown  bubble  of  apparent  prosperity;  and  though  the 
people  at  large  were  of  course  much  to  blame  both  for 
the  banks  and  the  system,  they  did  not  recognize  this,  and 
when  the  hard  day  of  reckoning  came,  they  looked  upon 
the  banks  and  bankers  as  the  evil  genii  alone  responsible 
for  their  misfortunes.  Meetings  began  to  denounce  the 
banking  system,  and  candidates  for  Congress  and  the 
State  Legislatures  were  soon  called  upon  to  pledge  them 
selves  against  the  establishment  of  any  bank. 

The  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  of  course  far  from 
escaping  blame  in  all  this  time  of  trial,  and  historians  by 
no  means  likely  to  be  hard  on  the  institution  think  that  it 
was  justly  charged  with  a  large  share  of  responsibility 
for  the  financial  condition.  An  effort  was  made  in  Con 
gress  to  repeal  its  charter,  and  the  State  Legislatures  were 
urged  to  tax  the  branches  out  of  existence. 

In  Maryland,  Ohio,  Kentucky,  and  Tennessee  such 
laws  were  passed,  and  contests  of  historical  interest  and 
of  vast  importance  took  place  between  those  States  and  the 
bank.  The  institution  was,  moreover,  investigated  by 
Congress,  and  was  soon  found  to  have  been  managed,  as 
corporations  are  so  often  managed,  in  the  illegitimate  in 
terest  of  a  favored  ring  of  stockholders,  who  had  not  even 
paid  for  their  stock  in  cash.  At  the  same  time  bribery  was 
also  discovered  to  have  existed,  and  hosts  of  minor  abuses. 
In  consequence  of  these  disclosures  the  president  resigned 


igo       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

and  Langdon  Cheves  was  appointed  in  his  place,  while 
Nicholas  Biddle  for  the  first  time  entered  the  management. 
The  new  officers  soon  wrote  that  a  most  appalling  state 
of  corruption  and  delinquency  was  found  to  have  existed.* 

Such  was  in  outline  the  history  of  these  events  during 
Benton's  early  manhood,  and  it  was  a  history  to  make  an 
impression  on  the  beliefs  of  the  least  observant,  let  alone 
one  so  much  given  as  he  was  to  watching  public  matters 
closely  and  studying  them.  It  has  been  seen  that  he  re 
moved  to  St.  Louis  in  1815,  but  we  have  little  knowledge 
of  him  during  the  succeeding  few  years. 

In  May,  1820,  at  a  time  when  the  office  was  not  likely 
to  be  much  sought  after,  he  was  elected  a  director  of  the 
Territorial  Bank  of  Missouri,  of  which  Auguste  Chou- 
teau  was  president,  but  he  can  hardly  have  served,  as  his 
election  to  the  Senate  occurred  in  the  autumn  of  the  same 
year  and  he  was  in  Washington  in  December.  This  bank 
did  not  fail,  but  was  forced  into  liquidation  in  1822. 
A  letter  from  Benton  to  Governor  Preston  in  1819  has 
been  quoted,  which  carries  no  little  appearance  that  its 
writer  was  inspired  by  the  exuberant  hopes  of  the  period 
of  inflation.  It  is  said  that  the  fever  for  speculation  was 
even  more  rampant  in  Missouri  than  in  other  parts  of 
the  country,  and  the  crash  which  came  there  shortly  be 
fore  its  admission  to  Statehood  may  well  have  swept 
away  from  Benton  some  property  which  he  had  thought 
to  be  securely  his.f 

Whether  this  be  the  case  or  not  is  conjecture,  but 
there  is  positive  evidence  that  at  or  before  this  time  he 


*  My  account  of  the  events  of  this  time  is  taken  chiefly  from 
Schouler's  History  of  the  United  States,  iii.,  pp.  109-120;  Mc- 
Master's  United  States,  iv.,  pp.  484-509;  Burgess's  Middle  Period, 
pp.  190-194. 

f  Billon's  Annals  of  St.  Louis  in  Territorial  Days,  p.  89 ;  His 
tory  of  Banking,  by  John  J.  Knox,  pp.  781,  782;  McMaster's  United 
States,  iv.,  pp.  509,  510, 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  191 

had  come  to  have  a  dislike  for  banks  and  their  methods, 
and  had  in  particular  imbibed  a  feeling  of  entire  distrust 
in  a  national  bank.  It  has  been  seen  that  in  1819  his 
newspaper  expressed  its  opinion  against  banks  in  general 
and  was  fond  of  quoting  like  views  from  other  papers, 
and  he  himself  has  left  on  record  some  of  his  impressions 
of  the  time. 

His  speech  in  the  Senate  has  already  been  quoted,  in 
which  he  told  how  his  journey  in  1820  from  the  Missis 
sippi  River  to  Washington  had  been  "  one  long  ride  amidst 
the  crashings  and  explosions  of  banks,  and  the  cries  and 
lamentations  of  a  deceived  and  plundered  people,"  and  it 
is  extremely  likely  that,  as  he  passed  through  Ohio  at 
that  time,  he  heard  accounts  of  its  "  crowbar  law,"  under 
which  State  officers  had  gone  into  the  branch  bank  at 
Chillicothe  and  vi  et  armis  seized  and  carried  off  a  large 
sum  of  money  under  a  State  tax  law7,  almost  in  the  teeth 
of  an  injunction  from  the  federal  court. 

There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  his  statement  in  this  speech 
that,  in  his  view,  even  at  that  early  day  the  National  Bank 
was  "the  greatest  and  most  potential  author"  of  the  ills 
the  country  suffered  from,  and  this  conviction  evidently 
sank  deep  into  his  beliefs,  as  he  thought  over  the  delusions 
of  the  paper  system  and  saw  the  national  bank,  which  had 
been  heralded  as  the  remedy  for  the  evils  of  the  time,  with 
its  branches  shut,  and  "  notoriously  bankrupt,  except  for 
the  credit  and  revenues  of  the  United  States,  which  were 
lent  and  extended  to  save  it."  In  another  speech  *  he 
gave  a  painful  reminiscence  of  the  sufferings  of  the  coun 
try  at  about  this  time,  when  "  all  the  fruitless  panaceas 
of  stay  laws,  stop  laws,  property  laws,  and  replevin  laws 
were  successively  and  vainly  tried." 

In  his  opinion,  the  West  had  suffered  even  more  than 

*  C.  G..  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  118.  Ibid.,  27th 
Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  198. 


192       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

any  other  part  of  the  country.  Gold  and  silver  had  all 
vanished,  the  local  banks  had  been  crushed  out  of  exist 
ence  by  the  National  Bank,  and  the  latter  institution  had 
almost  shut  the  doors  of  its  Western  branches  and  was 
engaged  only  in  pressing  its  debtors.  He  summed  up  as 
follows  the  opinion  held  from  about  1820  to  1824  of  the 
bank  and  its  accountability : 

"  It  was  known  as  the  author  of  the  calamities  which  then 
afflicted  the  country;  it  had  just  been  arraigned  for  numerous 
crimes  by  a  committee  of  Congress — had  been  subjected  to  two 
motions  to  dissolve  its  charter  by  scire  facias — and  to  one  to  repeal 
it  by  law ;  and,  loaded  with  infamy,  it  had  merely  escaped  with  its 
life,  and  was  dragging  out  the  ignominious  existence  of  an  un 
executed  felon.  It  was  not  a  question  of  love,  but  of  hatred,  to  the 
institution  at  that  time.  All  concurred  in  execrating  it ;  many  were 
for  destroying  it." 

This  is  a  high-wrought  and  partisan  account  of  the 
feeling  of  the  day,  but  the  passionate  and  perhaps  unrea 
sonable  acts  of  the  people  only  argue  more  strongly  what 
has  been  said  already,  that  a  general  distrust  and  detesta 
tion  of  banks,  and  especially  of  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States,  was  then  entertained  throughout  the  country  and 
particularly  in  the  West.  This  feeling  long  survived  in 
the  latter  region,  and  a  striking  similarity  will  be  found 
all  through  the  history  between  the  views  Benton  held 
upon  the  subject  and  those  maintained  by  Jackson,  while 
attention  has  been  already  directed  to  the  fact  that  Clay's 
arguments  in  1811  were  also  based  on  the  same  general 
grounds. 

Nor  did  Jackson's  opinions  burst  suddenly  into  exist 
ence  in  a  moment  of  rage,  as  has  been  so  often  maintained, 
but  will  be  found  to  have  been  of  gradual  growth.  That 
they  were  definitely  fixed  at  the  time  he  became  President 
will  be  shown  shortly,  and  in  1820  he  had  memorialized  * 
the  Legislature  of  Tennessee  against  the  proposed  Bank 

*  History  of  Banking,  by  John  Jay  Knox,  pp.  650,  651, 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  193 

of  Tennessee,  complaining  that  its  notes  would  not  be 
"  convertible  into  specie,''  and  insisting  that  "  bills  issued 
on  any  other  basis  .  .  .  must  prove  inefficient  and  abor 
tive."  And  again  in  1827  he  had  strongly  opposed  *  the 
movement  which  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  a  branch 
of  the  United  States  Bank  at  Nashville. 

Surely,  then,  there  is  evidence  enough  that  the  powers 
which  brought  about  Jackson's  election,  as  well  as  Jackson 
himself,  had  an  ingrained  dislike  and  distrust  of  the  vast 
United  States  Bank,  and  a  recent  historian  is  justified 
in  writing  that  these  forces  and  interests  "  were  bound, 
under  the  first  general  financial  pressure,  to  make  an  on 
slaught  upon  the  '  money  power  and  privilege'  of  the  East, 
as  embodied  in  the  United  States  Bank."  Yet  numbers 
of  writers  leave  entirely  out  of  view  all  this  evidence  of  a 
gradual  growth  of  public  opinion,  and  have  it  that  the 
bank  contest  flashed  into  being  in  one  sudden  moment  of 
passion,  when  Jackson  was  balked  in  a  desire  to  control 
the  management  of  a  branch  in  New  Hampshire. 

This  account  of  the  origin  of  the  contest  owes  its  ex 
istence  to  a  Congressional  report  of  John  Quincy  Adams, 
— a  hater  of  Jackson  and  a  bitter  partisan, — and  in  the 
nature  of  affairs  can  only  have  reached  him  because  it 
represented  the  opinion  of  the  bank  management.  That 
the  petty  contest  made  Jackson  angry  and  contributed  to 
his  dislike  of  the  institution  is  doubtless  true,  and  it  might 
well  do  so;  for  even  admitting  that  the  claims  of  inde 
pendence  of  the  administration  advanced  by  the  bank  were 
justified  in  strict  law,  yet  they  were  maintained  with  a 
boldness  and  a  confidence  of  power  which  seemed  intended 
to  bid  defiance  to  the  Federal  Executive. f 

This  whole  story  of  the  origin  of  Jackson's  contest 

*  C.  G..  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  213. 
t  Schouler's  United  States,  iii.,  pp.  471-473 :    Parton's  Jackson, 
iii..  pp.  260-268. 

13 


I94       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

with  the  bank  seems  to  me  merely  absurd,  and  only  valua 
ble  as  an  illustration  of  how  readily  historians  will  follow 
any  lead  furnished  them,  provided  that  it  jumps  with 
their  prejudices.  Not  only  is  the  story  in  the  highest 
degree  unlikely  in  itself,  but  there  are,  moreover,  many 
facts  which  demonstrate  beyond  peradventure  that  the 
cause  of  the  contest  with  the  bank  lay  far  deeper. 

It  is  curious  to  find  that  as  early  as  November  10, 
1837,  shortly  after  Jackson's  retirement  from  the  presi 
dency,  Benton  wrote  *  him  from  a  steamboat  on  the  Ohio 
River,  asking  for  aid  in  regard  to  a  speech  the  writer 
intended  to  make  at  the  coming  session  to  defend  him 
from  this  very  story.  He  wanted  Jackson's  recollections 
and  proofs  as  to  his  opinions  upon  the  bank  before  1829, 
and  specified  that  his  object  was  to  make  a  defence 

"  from  the  story  now  systematically  propagated,  that  you  were  in 
favor  of  the  late  Bank  of  the  United  States  until  you  found  that  it 
could  not  be  used  for  your  political  purposes,  and  that  you  then 
turned  against  it  from  resentment.  This  imputation  against  you 
was  commenced  in  1832,  but  was  generally  deemed  then  too  ridicu 
lous  and  contemptible  to  merit  serious  refutation.  But  the  case  is 
different  now.  The  charge  has  become  a  part  of  the  permanent 
system  of  operations  of  the  whole  bank  party,  and  with  the  obvious 
view  of  giving  it  perpetuity,  not  only  to  injure  you,  but  also  to 
injure  the  cause  of  the  constitution  and  of  the  people  in  your  person, 
and  to  gain  an  undue  sympathy  and  respect  for  the  bank  by  repre 
senting  her  as  the  victim  of  her  integrity  and  the  object  of  your 
revenge,  on  account  of  her  virtuous  resistance  to  your  dishonorable 
propositions." 

Benton  received  an  answer  and  made  his  speech  in 
due  time,  but  the  upturning  since  of  buried  historical 
records  has  furnished  a  far  more  complete  defence  than 
he  was  then  able  to  make  from  this  absurd  partisan  charge 
of  such  remarkable  vitality.  The  general  tendency  of  the 
section  of  the  country  whence  Jackson  came  has  been 

*  Jackson  Correspondence  in  Library  of  Congress. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  195 

already  mentioned,  but  there  is  far  more  direct  evidence. 
Thus,  James  A.  Hamilton  writes  *  that  as  early  as  1827, 
in  a  conversation  with  him,  Jackson  "  expressed  strong 
opinions  against  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,"  and 
Nicholas  Biddle  was  in  this  same  year  warned  f  from 
another  source  that  Jackson  had  strongly  opposed  the  re 
peal  of  the  Tennessee  law  taxing  branches  established  in 
that  State. 

Again,  there  was  long  a  rumor  prevalent  in  Washing 
ton  that  Jackson  had  intended  in  his  inaugural  address  to 
suggest  the  advisability  of  not  rechartering  the  bank,  but 
was  dissuaded.  This  story  is  dismissed  by  Parton  f  in 
a  very  few  words  on  his  mere  ipse  dixit  and  without  a 
hint  of  authority  for  so  doing,  but  is  undoubtedly  true. 
Not  only  do  Bancroft  §  and  Ingersoll,||  both  of  whom 
were  close  to  the  events  of  the  day,  say  in  words  that  such 
was  Jackson's  intention,  but  his  intimate  personal  friend 
Blair  **  apparently  adds  his  testimony  to  the  same  effect, 
and  Polk  f  f  also  gave  details  upon  the  subject  in  a  speech 
in  Congress  in  1833. 

There  is,  again,  conclusive  evidence  from  quite  an 
other  source  that  Jackson,  soon  after  he  entered  upon  his 
duties  as  President,  and  before  the  contest  with  the  branch 
bank  arose,  expressed  himself  on  numerous  occasions  as 
opposed  to  the  existence  of  the  bank.  Ingham,  his  first 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  published  a  statement  ^  in 
1832,  in  which  he  said: 

*  Reminiscences,  p.  69. 
t  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  pp.  172-185. 
$  Jackson,  iii.,  pp.  258,  259. 
§  Cited  by  Parton,  ibid. 

||  History  of  the  Second  War  (Events  of  1814),  p.  254. 
**  Extra    Globe,   i.,   p.   90,   quoted   in   Catterall's    Second   Bank, 
p.  184. 

ft  C.  D.,  vol.  x.,  part  2  ( 1833-34) ,  P-  2263. 

Register  (1832),  vol.  xlii.,  pp.  315,  316, 


196       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  Soon  after  I  entered  on  the  duties  of  the  Treasury  Depart 
ment  [he  was  appointed  March  6,  1829]  I  became  sensible  from  the 
frequent  declarations  of  the  President  of  the  United  States,  made 
in  promiscuous  conversation  with  his  guests,  that  he  had  imbibed 
strong  prejudices  against  the  United  States  Bank,  and  was  decidedly 
opposed  to  the  existence  of  that  institution,  as  I  understood,  on 
grounds  of  expediency  alone.  As  all  my  own  experience,  observa 
tion,  and  reflexion  had  fixed  in  my  mind  an  opposite  conclusion,  I 
naturally  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  an  application  for  a 
renewal  of  the  charter  would  bring  these  opinions  into  conflict, 
unless  one  of  them  should  be  changed.  I  could  not  anticipate  any 
new  light  to  change  mine,  and  had  unhesitatingly  determined  so  far 
as  it  might  be  in  my  power  to  avert  the  meditated  destruction  of  the 
bank;  *  though  it  should  cause  my  retirement  from  office." 

He  then  goes  into  details  which  show  conclusively,  if 
any  one  requires  further  evidence  than  his  quoted  lan 
guage,  that  all  this  was  before  the  contest  over  the  branch 
in  New  Hampshire  arose  or  was  dreamed  of. 

There  can  be  no  answer  to  this  evidence,  which  is 
absolute  demonstration  from  a  source  that  is  not  friendly 
that  Jackson  was  opposed  to  the  existence  of  the  bank  and 
desired  its  discontinuance,  at  least  as  soon  as  the  early 
days  of  his  presidency.  And  the  following  indications 
are  to  the  same  effect.  Benton  said  in  1835  that  the 
President  had  always  been  opposed  to  it,  and  in  another 
place  he  says,  in  referring  to  the  fact  that  he  was  not 
in  Washington  when  Jackson's  first  message  was  pre- 


*  Italics  are  mine.  Prof.  Sumner  (Life  of  Jackson,  p.  242,  etc.) 
refers  to  this  letter,  and  even  mentions  its  general  tenor,  yet  with 
strange  prejudice  lays  all  his  stress  on  the  hackneyed  account  of  the 
origin  of  Jackson's  wrath.  And  Prof.  Bolles  (Financial  History  of 
the  United  States  from  1789  to  1860,  p.  335)  says  broadly  that  Jack 
son  was  opposed  to  the  bank  "  because  he  could  not  control  its 
offices  and  convert  the  institution  into  a  piece  of  party  machinery," 
and  then  goes  on  to  detail  the  same  old  story.  It  is  a  pleasure  to 
find  the  story  cast  aside  as  worthless  by  a  recent  writer,  who  is  in 
general  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  bank.  Catterall's  Second  Bank, 
pp.  172-185. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  197 

pared,  "  we  knew  each  other's  opinions  on  the  question 
of  a  bank  itself;  but  had  gone  no  further."  * 

Jackson  himself,  too,  when  his  first  message  was  under 
discussion  before  being  sent  to  Congress,  replied  f  to  an 
objection  to  the  portion  about  the  bank  by  saying,  "  I  am 
pledged  against  the  bank ;"  and  in  his  famous  protest  to 
the  Senate  in  1834,  when  narrating  the  growth  of  his 
opinions,  he  wrote  that  his  "  convictions  of  the  dangerous 
tendencies  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  .  .  .  were 
so  overpowering  when  he  entered  on  the  duties  of  Chief 
Magistrate,  that  he  felt  it  his  duty,  notwithstanding  the 
objections  of  the  friends  by  whom  he  was  surrounded,  to 
avail  himself  of  the  first  occasion  to  call  the  attention  of 
Congress  and  the  people  to  the  question  of  its  recharter." 

Benton' s  views  are  still  more  positively  known,  and 
some  time  before  Jackson  was  elected  President,  Ben- 
ton  looked  upon  the  bank  with  disfavor  and  moved 
against  it;  and  in  January,  1829,  when  Jackson  had  not 
yet  been  inaugurated,  Benton  distinctly  intimated  his 
opinion  against  "  the  renewal  of  a  charter  adverse  to  the 
interests  of  the  people."  These  were  undoubtedly  expres 
sions  of  the  general  Western  dislike  of  the  bank,  and  the 
same  feeling  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  motion  made  in  the 
House  in  December,  1827,  by  P.  P.  Barbour  to  sell  the 
stock  of  the  institution  held  by  the  United  States.  In  the 
debate  upon  this  motion  opposition  to  the  bank  and  its 
recharter  had  clearly  cropped  out,  but  the  motion  was 
overwhelmingly  defeated  by  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
four  votes  to  nine,  the  minority  composed  of  members 
from  Virginia,  Kentucky,  North  Carolina,  and  Georgia. 

But  Benton  was  beyond  question  the  member  most 
strongly  opposed  to  the  bank,  and  he  made  several  early 
movements  against  it.  Thus,  on  March  3,  1828,  he  in- 

*  View,  i.,  p.  539,  and  ibid.,  p.  158. 

f  J.  A.  Hamilton's  Reminiscences,  p.  150. 


198       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

troduced  a  series  of  resolutions  *  in  regard  to  the  balances 
of  United  States  money  in  the  bank.  His  view  was  that 
the  Act  of  1817  upon  the  subject  of  the  surplus  revenue 
to  be  retained  in  the  Treasury  had  been  misinterpreted, 
so  that  the  balances  retained  were  much  larger  than  the 
law  required  or  there  was  any  need  for,  and  his  motion 
was  that  the  Committee  on  Finance  should  inquire  into 
this  question,  and,  if  it  should  be  of  opinion  that  the  law 
had  been  correctly  interpreted,  then  it  should  report  an 
amendment  to  reduce  the  balance  required  to  be  retained. 

His  resolutions  also  contained  a  clause  to  increase  the 
powers  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Sinking  Fund  and 
give  them  a  discretionary  power  to  make  purchases  of  the 
public  debt  at  its  market  price,  in  order  that  the  cash  in 
the  bank  should  be  used  to  buy  the  three  per  cents.,  which 
then  sold  at  eighty-five,  while  the  existing  laws  only 
allowed  them  to  be  bought  at  sixty-five.  His  view  was 
that  this  would  reduce  the  interest  charge  against  the 
government,  and  he  hinted  that  the  bank  ought  to  pay 
interest  on  its  balances. 

Early  in  the  next  session  he  again  introduced  resolu 
tions  f  upon  the  same  general  subject,  but  his  ideas  had 
grown,  and  one  clause  read  that  "  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States  ought  to  be  required  to  make  a  compensation  to 
the  people  of  the  United  States  for  the  use  of  the  balances 
of  public  money  in  its  hands."  He  stated  these  balances 
to  average  about  three  and  a  half  millions,  £  and  told 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  iv.,  part  I,  1827-28,  pp.  379-394. 

f  Ibid.,  vol.  v.,  1828-29,  pp.  18-28. 

t  Modern  writers  put  them  much  higher.  Thus,  Charles  H. 
Peck  says  in  his  Jacksonian  Epoch  that  the  United  States  money 
in  the  bank  from  1818  to  1832  averaged  $6,700,000.  See  also  John 
Jay  Knox's  History  of  Banking,  p.  63 ;  Parton's  Jackson,  iii.,  p.  257 ; 
Schouler's  United  States,  iii.,  p.  469.  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  ap 
pendix,  v.,  p.  503,  makes  them  average  something  over  eight  mil 
lions  from  1817  to  1833,  inclusive. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  199 

of  the  years  of  struggle  Burke  and  others  had  had 
in  England  before  they  succeeded  in  forcing  the  Bank 
of  England  to  make  a  just  compensation  for  the  use  of 
the  balances  of  national  money  it  held.  Speaking  upon 
his  resolutions  on  January  6,  1829,  Benton  said,  "  an  au 
thority  to  retain  two  millions  of  surplus  money  in  the 
Treasury  is  an  authority  to  make  a  gratuitous  loan  of 
it  to  the  bank  which  has  the  keeping  of  it,  and  where  it 
may  be  used  in  creating  an  interest  in  elections,  or  at  the 
renewal  of  a  charter  adverse  to  the  interests  of  the 
people." 

The  resolutions  of  both  sessions  were  referred  after 
slight  debate,  and  reports  were  made  against  them,  in 
accordance  with  the  manner  of  legislative  bodies,  about 
fourteen  days  before  the  close  of  the  session,  so  that  of 
course  no  result  whatsoever  but  discussion  was  attained. 
Benton  had  intended  to  introduce  resolutions  again  at 
the  next  session,  but  Jackson's  well-known  reference  to 
the  bank  in  his  first  message*  raised  the  subject  in  a 
better  form.  Once  more,  however,  a  report  strongly  in 

* "  The  charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  expires  in 
1836,  and  its  stockholders  will  most  probably  apply  for  a  renewal  of 
their  privileges.  In  order  to  avoid  the  evils  resulting  from  precipi 
tancy  in  a  measure  involving  such  important  principles,  and  such 
deep  pecuniary  interests,  I  feel  that  I  cannot,  in  justice  to  the  parties 
interested,  too  soon  present  it  to  the  deliberate  consideration  of  the 
legislature  and  the  people.  Both  the  constitutionality  and  the  ex 
pediency  of  the  law  creating  this  bank,  are  well  questioned  by  a 
large  portion  of  our  fellow-citizens ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  by  all 
that  it  has  failed  in  the  great  end  of  establishing  a  uniform  and 
sound  currency. 

"  Under  these  circumstances,  if  such  an  institution  is  deemed 
essential  to  the  fiscal  operations  of  the  government,  I  submit  to  the 
wisdom  of  the  legislature,  whether  a  national  one,  founded  upon  the 
credit  of  the  government,  and  its  revenues,  might  not  be  devised, 
which  would  avoid  all  constitutional  difficulties,  and  at  the  same 
time  secure  all  the  advantages  to  the  government  and  country  that 
were  expected  to  result  from  the  present  bank." 


200       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

favor  of  the  bank  came  in  upon  that  part  of  the  Presi 
dent's  message,  and  at  the  next  session,  after  Jackson 
had  suggested  still  more  decidedly  in  his  second  message 
his  doubt  of  the  advisability  of  rechartering  the  bank, 
Benton  asked  leave  on  February  2,  1831,  to  introduce  into 
the  Senate  a  resolution  in  the  words  "  that  the  charter  of 
the  Bank  of  the  United  States  ought  not  to  be  renewed." 

A  similar  resolution  had  been  laid  upon  the  table  in  the 
House  *  in  May  of  the  preceding  session  by  a  vote  of 
eighty-nine  to  sixty-six,  and  the  Senate  now  in  turn  voted 
by  twenty  yeas  to  twenty-three  nays  to  refuse  the  leave 
to  introduce,  but  not  until  Benton  had  secured  the  ad 
vantage  of  making  a  speech  f  of  some  length  which  he 
could  of  course  spread  abroad  through  the  country.  He 
based  his  opposition  on  the  grounds  which  have  been 
shown  to  have  been  usual,  and  in  speaking  of  the  institu 
tion  as  "  too  great  and  powerful  to  be  tolerated  in  a  gov 
ernment  of  free  and  equal  powers,"  complained  that  its 
franchises  were  granted  "  to  a  company  of  private  individ 
uals,  many  of  them  foreigners,  and  the  mass  of  them  re 
siding  in  a  remote  and  narrow  corner  of  the  Union,  un 
connected  by  any  sympathy  with  the  fertile  regions  of  the 
Great  Valley,  in  which  the  natural  power  of  this  Union 
—the  power  of  numbers — will  be  found  to  reside  long 
before  the  renewed  term  of  a  second  charter  would 
expire." 

He  quoted,  too,  from  the  evidence  of  Nicholas  Biddle 
before  a  committee  of  Congress,  who  had  said,  in  answer 
to  friendly  questions,  that  the  bank  had  never  oppressed 
any  of  the  State  banks,  but  had  added,  "  there  are  very 
few  banks  which  might  not  have  been  destroyed  by  an 
exertion  of  the  power  of  the  bank."  $  This  alone  was, 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  part  2,  1829-30,  p.  922. 
t  Ibid.,  vol.  vii.,  1830-31,  pp.  46-78. 

tThis  opinion  is  borne  out  by  Prof.  Catterall  (Second  Bank, 
p.  438),  and  I  presume  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact. 


THE    UNITED    STATES    BANK  201 

in  Benton's  view,  enough  to  show  that  a  recharter  should 
not  be  granted ;  but  he  went  on  to  call  attention  to  how 
largely  the  Bank  of  England  had  come  to  control  the 
government,  and  cited  in  particular  an  experience  of 
Pitt,  whose  national  policy  was,  in  Benton's  opinion,  con 
trolled  by  a  formal  notification  in  advance  from  the  bank 
not  to  expect  any  further  loans. 

He  expressed  his  willingness  "  to  see  the  currency  of 
the  Federal  Government  left  to  the  hard  money  men 
tioned  and  intended  in  the  Constitution,"  and  to  leave 
every  species  of  paper  money  "  to  the  State  authorities, 
unrecognized  by  the  Federal  Government,  and  only 
touched  by  it  for  its  own  convenience  when  equivalent  to 
gold  and  silver."  And  he  summed  up  his  general  view 
as  follows: 

"  I  have  handled  the  question  as  if  the  constitutional  authority 
for  the  bank  was  express,  and  as  if  its  whole  administration  had 
been  free  from  reproach.  I  have  looke'd  to  the  nature  of  the  institu 
tion  alone;  and,  finding  in  its  very  nature  insurmountable  objections 
to  its  existence,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  public  good 
requires  the  institution  to  cease.  I  believe  it  to  be  an  institution  of 
too  much  power;  of  tendencies  too  dangerous,  of  privileges  too 
odious,  of  expense  too  enormous,  to  be  safely  tolerated  under  any 
government  of  free  and  equal  laws.  .  .  . 

"  I  would  prefer  to  see  the  charter  expire  without  any  substitute ; 
but  I  am  willing  to  vote  for  the  substitute  recommended  by  the 
President,  stripped  as  it  is  of  all  power  to  make  loans  and  discounts. 
Divested  of  that  power,  it  loses  the  essential  feature,  and  had  as  well 
lose  the  name,  of  a  bank.  It  becomes  an  office  in  the  Treasury, 
limited  to  the  issue  of  a  species  of  exchequer  bills,  differing  from 
the  English  bills  of  that  name  in  the  vital  particular  of  a  prompt  and 
universal  convertibility  into  coin.  Such  bills  would  be  in  fact,  as 
well  as  in  name,  the  promissory  notes  of  the  United  States  of 
America.  They  would  be  payable  at  every  land-office,  custom-house, 
and  post-office,  and  by  every  collector  of  public  moneys,  in  the 
Union.  Payable  everywhere,  they  would  be  at  par  everywhere.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  said  that  the  charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States 
cannot  be  renewed.  And  in  saying  this,  I  wish  to  be  considered, 
not  as  a  heedless  denunciator,  supplying  the  place  of  argument  by 
empty  menace,  but  as  a  Senator,  considering  well  what  he  says, 


202       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

after  having  attentively  surveyed  his  subject.  I  repeat,  then,  that 
the  charter  cannot  be  renewed!  And,  in  coming  to  the  conclusion 
of  this  peremptory  opinion,  I  acknowledge  no  necessity  to  look 
beyond  the  walls  of  this  Capitol — bright  as  may  be  the  consolation 
which  rises  on  the  vision  from  the  other  end  of  the  avenue !  I  con 
fine  my  view  to  the  halls  of  Congress,  and  joyfully  exclaim,  it  is  no 
longer  the  year  1816 !  Fifteen  years  have  gone  by ;  times  have 
changed ;  and  former  arguments  have  lost  their  application.  We 
were  then  fresh  from  war,  loaded  with  debt,  and  with  all  the  em 
barrassments  which  follow  in  the  train  of  war.  We  are  now  settled 
down  in  peace  and  tranquillity,  with  all  the  blessings  attendant  upon 
quiet  and  repose.  There  is  no  longer  a  single  consideration  urged 
in  favor  of  chartering  the  bank  in  1816  which  can  have  the  least 
weight  or  application  in  favor  of  rechartering  it  now."  * 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vii.,  1830-31,  pp.  74,  75. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

THE     CONTEST     OVER     RECHARTER PARTY     MOVES THE 

BRANCH      BANK      ORDERS  BILL      FOR      RECHARTER 

PASSED  AND  VETOED THE  ELECTION  AND  JACKSON'S 

TRIUMPH 

THE  few  words  in  regard  to  the  United  States  Bank 
which  I  have  quoted  from  Jackson's  first  message,  and 
which  suggested  a  question  as  to  the  expediency  of  renew 
ing  its  charter,  attracted  at  the  time  much  attention  and 
have  since  been  generally  regarded  as  a  "  declaration  of 
war"  by  him  against  the  institution,  and  such  they  un 
doubtedly  were  in  one  sense;  though  Benton  maintained 
stoutly  and  with  no  little  reason  that,  as  the  stockholders 
had  no  vested  right  to  be  rechartered,  no  attack  was 
thereby  made  on  them.  In  the  message  of  1830  Jackson 
repeated  and  strengthened  his  criticisms,  but  in  1831, 
when  the  presidential  campaign  was  approaching,  he  con 
fined  himself  in  the  main  to  a  reference  to  what  he  had 
already  said. 

To  enter  a  presidential  campaign  with  a  contest  on  his 
hands  with  the  United  States  Bank  was  a  thing  which 
even  he  evidently  desired  to  avoid.  The  institution  was 
so  immensely  powerful  and  had  the  undoubted  support 
of  so  many  leading  men  who  were  in  general  supporters  of 
Jackson  that  he  and  his  friends  would  certainly  have  been 
glad  to  postpone  the  contest  and  avoid  the  risk  of  driving 
these  men  from  them.  I  think  I  can  see  in  one  of  Ben- 
ton's  speeches  *  that  in  May,  1832,  he  feared  the  result  of 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  I,  p.  965,  etc.  Clay's  opinion  is  expressed 
in  a  letter  quoted  in  Parton's  Jackson,  iii.,  p.  395. 

203 


204       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

such  a  contest,  and  Clay  thought  that  the  Executive  was 
playing  "  a  deep  game  to  avoid  at  this  session  the  respon 
sibility  of  any  decision  on  the  bank  question." 

Clay  was  determined  that  this  effort  should  not  suc 
ceed,  and  it  was  largely  owing  to  his  strong  will  that  the 
bank  question  was  made  a  leading  issue  of  the  campaign. 
The  platform  of  the  National  Republicans,  on  which  he 
was  nominated  in  December  at  Baltimore,  against  Jack 
son,  was  most  outspoken  in  favor  of  recharter,  and 
specially  emphasized  the  fact  that  Jackson  was  pledged  to 
veto  any  bill  for  that  purpose;  and,  though  he  had  no 
direct  influence  with  Bidclle  *  in  inducing  the  bank  at  this 
time  to  present  its  memorial  asking  for  recharter,  yet 
his  action  in  framing  the  platform  was  of  course  a  vital 
element  in  shaping  the  contest  and  forcing  the  issue  on 
Jackson. 

If  it  be  true  that  Jackson  had  thrown  down  the  gaunt 
let  to  the  bank  in  his  message,  that  institution  did  most 
certainly  pick  the  gauntlet  up  and  fairly  throw  it  in  his 
face  in  thus  precipitating  a  battle  for  its  existence  some 
years  before  any  necessity  called  for  it  and  at  the  very 
outset  of  one  of  our  presidential  campaigns.  From  this 
time  on  the  great  financial  institution  was  openly,  if  not 
avowedly,  aligned  with  one  of  the  leading  political  parties 
and  against  the  other. 

From  about  the  beginning  of  Jackson's  term  of  office 
efforts  had  been  making  f  to  reach  some  agreement  upon 

*  It  has  been  generally  believed  that  it  was  chiefly  Clay's  in 
fluence  which  led  to  the  bank's  decision,  but  Prof.  Catterall  has 
recently  shown  from  the  papers  of  Nicholas  Biddle  that  this  is  an 
error  and  that  Clay  had  little  or  no  influence  in  the  matter :  Biddle 
acted  for  himself  entirely  (Second  Bank,  p.  215,  etc.).  This  author 
recognizes  fully  that  the  "bank  war"  began  at  this  point  when  the 
bank  thus  precipitated  the  question  of  its  existence  into  the  political 
field  (Ibid.,  p.  242). 

f  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  pp.   186-214. 


CONTEST  OVER  RECHARTER     205 

the  question  of  recharter,  but  these  had  not  met  with  much 
success,  and  in  December  of  1831  there  was  still  doubt  in 
the  councils  of  the  bank  whether  to  present  the  question 
at  that  session  or  not.  At  this  time  a  confidential  agent 
(General  Cadwalader)  was  sent  to  Washington,  and  he 
had  further  negotiations  with  members  of  the  Cabinet 
and  public  men.  Benton  writes  *  that  one  chief  purpose 
of  his  visit  was  to  make  sure  of  united  action,  for  many 
of  the  bank's  friends  were  friends  of  Jackson  and  their 
course  of  action  must  be  known  in  advance.  Two 
separate  caucuses  were  then  held,  one  of  the  National 
Republicans  and  one  of  Democrats  who  favored  the 
bank,  and  Benton  was  regularly  informed  by  a  friend  in 
one  of  them  of  the  progress  made.  The  two  caucuses 
disagreed,  but  the  larger  one,  composed  of  National  Re 
publicans,  was  presided  over  by  Clay,  and  his  strong 
will  carried  it  in  favor  of  immediate  action,  with  the 
result  that  the  smaller  Democratic  caucus  voted  the  same 
way. 

It  cannot  be  known  how  great  an  influence  this  action 
of  the  politicians  had  with  Biddle  in  leading  him  to  his 
final  decision,  but  on  January  9,  1832,  the  bank's  memorial 
for  recharter  was  presented  in  both  Houses  of  Congress, 
and  from  that  day  the  bank  question  became  and  remained 
for  years  one  of  party  strife  of  the  most  bitter  kind  that 
our  country  has  ever  seen.  It  was  well  known  that  there 
was  a  majority  in  favor  of  the  bank  in  both  Houses,  and 
Benton  writes  f  that  therefore 

"  our  course  of  action  became  obvious,  which  was — to  attack  in 
cessantly,  assail  at  all  points,  display  the  evil  of  the  institution, 
rouse  the  people — and  prepare  them  to  sustain  the  veto.  It  was  seen 
to  be  the  policy  of  the  bank  leaders  to  carry  the  charter  first  and 
quietly  through  the  Senate;  and  afterwards  in  the  same  way 

*  View,  i.,  p.  227 . 

t  Ibid.,  p.  235,  etc. 


206       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

through  the  House.  We  determined  to  have  a  contest  in  both  places, 
and  to  force  the  bank  into  defences  which  would  engage  it  in 
a  general  combat,  and  lay  it  open  to  side-blow,  as  well  as  open 
attacks.  With  this  view  a  great  many  amendments  and  inquiries 
were  prepared  to  be  offered  in  the  Senate,  all  of  them  proper,  or 
plausible,  recommendable  in  themselves,  and  supported  by  acceptable 
reasons;  which  the  friends  of  the  bank  must  either  answer,  or  reject 
without  answer ;  and  so  incur  odium.  In  the  House,  it  was  de 
termined  to  make  a  move,  which,  whether  resisted  or  admitted  by 
the  bank  majority,  would  be  certain  to  have  an  effect  against  the 
institution, — namely,  an  investigation  by  a  committee  of  the  House, 
as  provided  in  their  charter.  If  the  investigation  was  denied,  it 
would  be  guilt  shrinking  from  detection;  if  admitted,  it  was  well 
known  that  misconduct  would  be  found.  I  conceived  this  move 
ment,  and  had  charge  of  its  direction.  I  preferred  the  House  for  the 
theatre  of  investigation,  as  most  appropriate,  being  the  grand  inquest 
of  the  nation;  and,  besides,  wished  a  contest  to  be  going  on  there 
while  the  Senate  was  engaged  in  passing  the  charter." 

Clayton,  of  Georgia,  was  selected  to  make  this  move, 
and  Ben  ton  gave  him  a  "  memorandum  of  seven  alleged 
breaches  of  the  charter,  and  fifteen  instances  of  imputed 
misconduct  to  inquire  into."  Clayton  accordingly  made 
the  motion  for  a  committee  of  investigation,  reading  the 
charges,  Benton  writes,  "  from  a  narrow  slip  of  paper, 
which  he  continued  rolling  round  his  finger  all  the  time 
...  as  on  a  cylinder,  to  prevent  my  handwriting  from 
being  seen."  Having  been  obliged  to  act  in  a  hurry, 
Clayton  had  not  even  copied  the  memorandum,  but  used 
the  original  given  him  by  Benton. 

These  charges  are  quoted  at  length  in  the  "  Thirty 
Years'  View,"  and  were  in  general  similar  to  those  made 
throughout  the  contest.  The  move  met  with  the  strongest 
opposition,  and  was  only  carried  in  the  end  for  a  restricted 
investigation.  Its  results  need  not  be  gone  into  here,  but 
it  was  probably  of  vital  importance  in  the  contest,  and 
seems  *  to  have  been  the  chief  means  of  stopping  certain 

*  Life  of  C.  J.  Ingersoll,  by  the  present  writer,  pp.  171-176.  Prof. 
Catterall  has  reached  the  same  conclusion  (Second  Bank,  p.  228). 


CONTEST   OVER    RECHARTER  207 

final  efforts  at  adjustment  which  were  at  that  time  going 
on  between  members  of  the  Cabinet  friendly  to  the  bank 
and  a  friend  of  Nicholas  Biddle,  for  Jackson  would 
agree  to  no  compromise,  pending  the  investigation. 

Some  have  found  a  very  low  morality  in  this  story 
of  party  plans  from  Benton,  but  no  heated  party  contest 
is  carried  on  otherwise.  Charges  are  always  made  which 
are  not,  in  the  opinion  of  the  person  making  them,  of  any 
great  weight;  they  are  made  because  they  carry  weight 
with  others.  This  is  certainly  fair  in  party  warfare,  and 
the  opinions  of  others  are  properly  appealed  to  and  sought 
to  be  influenced.  No  human  being  can  doubt  that  Ben- 
ton's  mind  was  made  up  on  the  main  question,  that  the 
bank  ought  not  to  be  rechartered  and  was  in  every  way 
a  most  harmful  and  dangerous  institution,  so  surely  he 
was  entitled  to  seek  support  by  showing  that  it  had  been 
guilty  of  usury  or  other  minor  abuses  as  well  as  of  graver 
ones. 

It  will  accordingly  be  found  throughout  the  whole 
contest  that  he,  as  well  as  others  on  both  sides,  often 
indulged  in  partisanship,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  every  point,  large  or  small,  which  they  thought 
would  conduce  to  the  great  end  they  had  in  view.  Thus, 
in  one  case  Benton  criticised  *  the  bank  for  having  had 
the  sheriff  serve  a  writ  to  revive  a  judgment  at  the  resi 
dence  of  a  Senator,  to  the  great  alarm  of  the  lady  of  the 
house.  This  is  a  very  ancient  arrow  in  the  quiver  of 
campaign  days,  and  is  undoubtedly  purely  for  popular 
effect,  but  has  been  used  and  allowed  by  thousands  of 
leading  men.  But  Benton  at  least  selected  and  laid  great 
weight  at  the  very  start  on  that  point  in  the  policy  of  the 
bank  which  even  supporters  of  the  institution  have  un 
sparingly  condemned  as  a  chief  cause  of  its  final  ruin  and 


*C.  D.,  vol.  xi.,  part  i,  1834-35,  p.  659;    View,  i.,  p.  548. 


208       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

as  already  at  this  early  day  beginning  to  be  a  cause  of 
embarrassment. 

In  the  year  1827  the  branch  banks  began,  in  pursuance 
of  a  plan  devised  by  Nicholas  Biddle,  to  issue  what  were 
known  as  "  branch  bank  orders."  These  were  orders 
drawn  by  officers  of  a  branch  upon  the  parent  bank ;  they 
were  made  to  the  order  of  some  officer  of  the  branch  and 
by  him  endorsed  in  blank,  and  then  circulated  as  currency. 
They  were  originally  issued  for  sums  of  five  and  ten  dol 
lars,  but  later  for  twenty  dollars  also,  and  had  been  de 
vised,  according  to  Professor  Sumner,  to  avoid  the 
necessity  under  the  charter  for  the  officers  of  the  parent 
bank  to  sign  all  formal  bank-notes;  while  Benton  main 
tains  that  the  real  underlying  reasons  were  to  avoid  the 
obligation  of  the  bank  under  its  charter  to  pay  its  notes 
at  any  branch  where  they  might  be  presented  by  the  gov 
ernment,  and  of  course  to  secure  the  profit  from  their 
actual  long  circulation  unredeemed. 

It  is  not  clear  that  Benton  was  entirely  right  here,  for 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  bank  could  have  treated  these 
drafts  or  orders  differently  from  its  notes  proper,  when 
presented  by  the  government.  But  such  drafts  presented 
by  individuals  were  beyond  doubt  legally  payable  only  in 
Philadelphia,  and  in  case  of  a  serious  stringency  there 
can  be  no  question  that  the  bank  would  have  refused 
their  payment  to  individuals  at  the  branches  and  thus  have 
secured  considerable  delay ;  and  when  we  remember  that 
they  were  issued  almost  exclusively  in  the  West,  and 
formed  nearly  the  only  currency  circulating  there,  no  one 
can  wonder  at  the  Western  complaints  against  them.  In 
regard  to  the  real  causes  which  led  the  bank  to  devise 
them,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  of  the  four  memorials  to 
Congress  praying  for  relief,  three  specified  distinctly  the 
obligation  to  cash  anywhere  its  notes  presented  by  the 
government  as  a  ground  on  which  they  asked  for 
an  amendment  of  the  charter,  and  one  of  these  was 


CONTEST    OVER    RECHARTER  209 

presented  when  Biddle  was  just  about  entering  the  presi 
dency.* 

These  orders  were  undoubtedly  strictly  not  payable 
anywhere  until  after  presentation  to  the  parent  bank  at 
Philadelphia,  many  miles  away,  for  acceptance  or  refusal, f 
but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  voluntarily  paid  at  any 
branch.  They  were  issued  exclusively  by  the  Southern 
and  Western  branches  and  a  few  others  of  smaller  class, 
and  Benton  says  that  in  many  States  they  had  excluded 
the  lawful  notes  of  the  bank  and  constituted  "  the  mass 
of  all  its  paper  seen  in  circulation."  %  He  insisted  that 
the  fact  of  their  voluntary  payment  at  any  branch  was 
nothing,  and  that  the  citizen  was  entitled  to  have  a  strict 
legal  right  to  depend  upon;  and  a  few  years  later  he 
maintained  that  as  early  as  1833  their  general  voluntary 
payment  was  stopped  and  certain  branches  refused  to 
accept  those  of  some  others.  § 


*  A.  of  C,  i6th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  1820-21,  p.  29.  Ibid.,  appendix, 
pp.  1534-1540.  Ibid.,  1 7th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  1821-22,  vol.  i.,  p.  538. 
Ibid.,  I7th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  1822-23,  pp.  713,  1134-1140;  see  also  p. 
642.  Prof.  Catterall  says,  however,  that  Biddle  did  not  think  this 
provision  a  defect  (Second  Bank,  pp.  94,  95,  114,  115). 

t  Prof.  Sumner  (Jackson,  p.  261)  writes  that  they  were  "in 
form  redeemable  where  issued,"  but  this  is  certainly  an  error,  unless 
it  means  after  they  were  sent  to  Philadelphia  and  refused  acceptance, 
a  contingency  very  unlikely  to  arise.  Benton  gives  their  form  as 
follows  (C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  i,  p.  120)  : 

"  Cashier  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States 
"  Pay  to  Jas.  L.  Smith,  or  order,  five  dollars. 

"  Office  of  discount  and  deposit  in  Utica, 
"  The  3rd  day  of  September,  1831. 
"  N.    V.    GRAZIER,    Cashier.     JOHN    B.    LEVING,   President." 

And  on  the  back  these  words :    "  Pay  to  the  bearer,  Jas.  L.  Smith." 

$  View,  i.,  p.  220 ;    C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  i,  1831-32,  p.  134. 
§  View,  i.,  p.  548.     Prof.  Catterall  seems  to  deny  this,  but  admits 
that  drafts  (and  apparently  notes  proper)  of  distant  branches  were 


210       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

According  to  a  report  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury,  some  seven  million  in  all  of  the  orders  had  been 
issued  by  1832,  of  which  about  five  million  were  believed 
to  be  in  circulation;  while  Professor  Sumner  says  that 
nearly  seven  and  a  half  million  were  out  at  this  same 
time.*  It  was  maintained  by  the  Westerners  that  they 
were  the  cause  of  the  constant  drain  of  specie  from  the 
West  to  the  East  in  order  to  meet  the  orders,  which  to  a 
certain  extent  found  their  way  to  Philadelphia  for  pay 
ment.  Professor  Sumner,  a  learned  political  economist 
and,  though  a  biographer  of  Jackson,  by  no  means  addicted 
to  overstating  the  strength  of  Jackson's  side  of  a  case,  says 
that  "  these  branch  drafts  were  a  most  unlucky  invention, 
and  to  them  is  to  be  traced  most  of  the  subsequent  real 
trouble  of  the  bank,"  and  he  adds  that  "  they  had  no  true 
convertibility.  There  was  no  check  whatever  on  the  in 
flation  of  the  currency  by  them  so  long  as  credit  was 
active.  .  .  .  (The  president  of  the  bank)  was  embar 
rassed  already  by  the  debt  of  the  Western  branches,  which 
had  been  produced  by  the  operation  of  the  branch  drafts. 


refused  reception  from  State  banks,  and  that  this  was  the  general 
custom  until  about  1833,  when  complaints  by  State  banks  and  the 
government  and  the  fear  of  consequences  led  to  an  order  to  receive 
all  the  issues  of  the  bank  and  its  offices  at  par  "  at  all  the  Atlantic 
offices"  (Second  Bank,  pp.  310-312).  Certainly,  if  such  was  the  case, 
a  uniform  currency  was  not  furnished  by  the  bank,  nor  is  it  to  be 
wondered  that  the  Westerners  were  dissatisfied  that  such  payment 
was  made  at  the  Eastern  offices  and  not  at  the  Western. 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  i,  p.  329.  Sumner's  Life  of  Jackson,  p. 
261.  Prof.  Catterall  (Second  Bank,  pp.  128,  129)  puts  the  figures  at 
slightly  over  five  million  out  of  a  total  circulation  of  twenty-one 
million,  and  thinks  this  was  very  slight ;  but  it  is  to  be  observed 
that  the  five  million  of  branch  drafts  were  undoubtedly  meant  for 
and  were  to  be  found  almost  exclusively  in  the  thinly  settled  country 
districts,  and  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  Benton's  statement  that  they 
constituted  in  many  States  the  only  circulating  medium  furnished  by 
the  United  States  Bank. 


CONTEST    OVER    RECHARTER  211 

Their  effect  was  just  beginning  to  tell  seriously.  ... 
Biddle  could  not  make  the  Western  branches  pay."  * 

At  an  early  date  in  the  contest,  on  January  20,  1832, 
Benton  asked  leave  to  introduce  into  the  Senate  a  resolu 
tion  that  the  branch  bank  orders  were  illegal  as  currency 
and  ought  to  be  suppressed.  There  was  little  discussion 
of  the  matter,  and  leave  was  refused  by  a  vote  of  sixteen 
ayes  to  twenty-five  noes,  soon  after  Benton  had  made  an 
elaborate  speech,  in  the  course  of  which  he  said  :f 

"  The  resolution  which  I  am  asking  leave  to  bring  in  expresses 
its  own  object.  It  declares  against  the  legality  of  these  orders,  AS  A 
CURRENCY.  It  is  the  currency  which  I  arraign.  I  make  no  inquiry, 
for  I  will  not  embarrass  my  subject  with  irrelevant  and  immaterial 
inquiries — I  make  no  inquiry  into  the  modes  of  contract  and  pay 
ment  which  are  permitted,  or  not  permitted,  to  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  in  the  conduct  of  its  private  dealings  and  individual 
transactions.  My  business  lies  with  the  currency;  for,  between 
public  currency  and  private  dealings  the  charter  of  the  bank  has 
made  a  distinction,  and  that  founded  in  the  nature  of  things,  as 
broad  as  lines  can  draw,  and  as  clear  as  words  can  express.  The 
currency  concerns  the  public;  and  the  soundness  of  that  currency 
is  taken  under  the  particular  guardianship  of  the  charter ;  a  special 
code  of  law  is  enacted  for  it ;  private  dealings  concern  individuals ; 

*  Life  of  Jackson,  pp.  235,  261,  268,  269.  Prof.  Catterall,  the  most 
recent  writer  on  the  bank,  differs  from  Prof.  Sumner  on  this  point, 
and  in  his  chapter  on  the  branch  drafts  (Second  Bank,  chapter  vi., 
and  see  especially  pp.  120-131)  defends  them  in  toto;  but  it  is  to  be 
observed  that  in  another  part  of  his  book  (p.  236)  the  same  writer 
speaks  with  apparent  approval  of  the  amendment  contained  in  the 
bill  of  1832  (which  Jackson  vetoed)  prohibiting  them,  and  says  that 
their  prohibition  "  would  terminate  the  use  of  an  irregular  currency, 
which  might  be  dangerous,  and  which  was  certainly  not  amenable 
to  the  laws  that  applied  to  the  rest  of  the  bank's  issues."  Surely,  no 
stronger  words  of  condemnation  could  be  written.  He  seems  to 
admit  fully,  too,  the  inability,  for  some  reason,  of  the  bank  to  con 
trol  the  branches  (Ibid.,  pp.  390-393,  402)  and  to  differ  with  Prof. 
Sumner  chiefly  as  to  the  question  of  convertibility. 

fView,  i.,  pp.  221-224.  C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  i,  1831-32,  pp. 
H3-I44. 


212       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

and  it  is  for  individuals,  in  making  their  bargains,  to  take  care  of 
their  own  interests.  The  charter  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States 
has  authorized,  but  not  regulated,  certain  private  dealings  of  the 
bank ;  it  is  full  and  explicit  upon  the  regulation  of  currency.  Upon 
this  distinction  I  take  my  stand.  I  establish  myself  upon  the  broad 
and  clear  distinction  which  reason  makes,  and  the  charter  sanctions. 
I  arraign  the  currency !  .  .  . 

"  I  object  to  it  because  it  authorizes  an  issue  of  currency  upon 
construction.  The  issue  of  currency,  sir,  was  the  great  and  main 
business  for  which  the  bank  was  created,  and  which  it  is,  in  the 
twelfth  article,  expressly  authorized  to  perform;  and  I  cannot  pay 
so  poor  a  compliment  to  the  understandings  of  the  eminent  men 
who  framed  that  charter,  as  to  suppose  that  they  left  the  main  busi 
ness  of  the  bank  to  be  found,  by  construction,  in  an  independent 
phrase,  and  that  phrase  to  be  found  but  once  in  the  whole  charter. 
I  cannot  compliment  their  understandings  with  the  supposition  that, 
after  having  authorized  and  denned  a  currency,  and  subjected  it  to 
numerous  restrictions,  they  had  left  open  the  door  to  the  issue  of 
another  sort  of  currency,  upon  construction,  which  should  supersede 
the  kind  they  had  prescribed,  and  be  free  from  every  restriction  to 
which  the  prescribed  currency  was  subject. 

"  Let  us  recapitulate.  Let  us  sum  up  the  points  of  incompati 
bility,  between  the  characteristics  of  this  currency  and  the  requisites 
of  the  charter;  let  us  group  and  contrast  the  frightful  features  of 
their  flagrant  illegality.  I.  Are  they  signed  by  the  president  of  the 
bank  and  his  principal  cashier?  They  are  not!  2.  Are  they  under 
the  corporate  seal  ?  Not  at  all !  3.  Are  they  drawn  in  the  name  of 
the  corporation?  By  no  means!  4.  Are  they  subject  to  the  double 
limitation  of  time  and  amount  in  case  of  credit?  They  are  not; 
they  may  exceed  sixty  days'  time,  and  be  less  than  one  hundred 
dollars !  5.  Are  they  limited  to  the  minimum  size  of  five  dollars  ? 
Not  at  all !  6.  Are  they  subject  to  the  supervision  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury?  Not  in  the  least!  7.  The  prohibition  against 
suspending  specie  payments?  They  are  not  subject  to  it!  8.  The 
penalty  of  double  interest  for  delayed  payment?  Not  subject  to  it! 
9.  Are  they  payable  where  issued?  Not  at  all,  neither  by  their  own 
terms,  nor  by  any  law  applicable  to  them !  10.  Are  they  payable  at 
other  branches?  So  far  from  it,  that  they  were  invented  to  avoid 
such  payment!  n.  Are  they  transferable  by  delivery?  No;  by 
indorsement!  12.  Are  they  receivable  in  payment  of  public  dues? 
So  far  from  it,  that  they  are  twice  excluded  from  such  payments  by 
positive  enactments!  13.  Are  the  directors  liable  for  excessive 
issues  ?  Not  at  all !  14.  Has  the  holder  a  right  to  sue  at  the  branch 


CONTEST  OVER  RECHARTER     213 

which  issues  the  order?  No,  sir,  he  has  a  right  to  go  to  Philadel 
phia,  and  sue  the  directors  there !  a  right  about  equivalent  to  the 
privilege  of  going  to  Mecca  to  sue  the  successors  of  Mahomet  for 
the  bones  of  the  prophet !  Fourteen  points  of  contrariety  and  dif 
ference.  Not  a  feature  of  the  charter  in  the  faces  of  these  orders. 
Every  mark  a  contrast ;  every  lineament  a  contradiction ;  all  an 
nouncing,  or  rather  denouncing,  to  the  world,  the  positive  fact  of  a 
spurious  progeny;  the  incontestable  evidence  of  an  illegitimate  and 
bastard  issue.  .  .  . 

"  The  bank  went  into  operation  with  the  beginning  of  the  year 
1817;  established  eighteen  branches,  half  a  dozen  of  which  in  the 
South  and  West ;  issued  its  own  notes  freely,  and  made  large  issues 
of  notes  payable  at  all  these  branches.  The  course  of  trade  carried 
the  branch  notes  of  the  South  and  West  to  the  Northeast;  and 
nothing  in  the  course  of  trade  brought  them  back  to  the  West.  They 
were  payable  in  all  demands  to  the  Federal  Government ;  merchants 
in  Philadelphia,  New- York,  and  Boston  received  them  in  payment  of 
goods,  and  gave  them — not  back  again  in  payment  of  Southern  and 
Western  produce — but  to  the  collectors  of  the  customs.  Become  the 
money  of  the  government,  the  bank  had  to  treat  them  as  cash.  The 
fourteenth  section  of  the  charter  made  them  receivable  in  all  pay 
ments  to  the  government,  and  another  clause  required  the  bank  to 
transfer  the  moneys  of  the  government  to  any  point  ordered ;  these 
two  clauses  (the  transfer  clause  being  harmless  without  the  re 
ceiving  one  contained  in  the  fourteenth  section)  laid  the  bank  under 
the  obligation  to  cash  all  the  notes  of  all  the  branches  wherever 
presented ;  for,  if  she  did  not  do  it,  she  would  be  ordered  to  transfer 
the  notes  to  the  place  where  they  were  payable,  and  then  to  transfer 
the  silver  to  the  place  where  it  was  wanted ;  and  both  these  opera 
tions  she  had  to  perform  at  her  own  expense.  The  Southern  and 
Western  branch  notes  flowed  to  the  Northeast ;  the  gold  and  silver 
of  the  South  and  West  were  ordered  to  follow  them ;  and,  in  a 
little  while,  the  specie  of  the  South  and  West  was  transferred  to 
the  Northeast;  but  the  notes  went  faster  on  horses  and  in  mail 
stages  than  the  silver  could  go  in  wagons ;  and  the  parent  bank  in 
Philadelphia,  and  the  branches  in  New  York  and  Boston,  exhausted 
by  the  double  operation  of  providing  for  their  own,  and  for  Southern 
and  Western  branch  notes  besides,  were  on  the  point  of  stopping 
payment  at  the  end  of  two  years.  Mr.  Cheves  then  came  into  the 
presidency;  he  stopped  the  issue  of  Southern  and  Western  branch 
paper,  and  saved  the  bank  from  insolvency !  Application  was  then 
made  to  Congress  to  repeal  the  fourteenth  section  of  the  charter, 
and  thus  relieve  the  bank  from  this  obligation  to  cash  its  notes  every 


2i4       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

where.  Congress  refused  to  do  so.  Application  was  made  at  the 
same  time  to  repeal  a  part  of  the  twelfth  fundamental  article  of  the 
constitution  of  the  bank,  for  the  purpose  of  relieving  the  president 
and  principal  cashier  of  the  parent  bank  from  the  labor  of  signing 
the  five  and  ten  dollar  notes.  Congress  refused  that  application  also. 
And  here  every  thing  rested  while  Mr.  Cheves  continued  president. 
The  Southern  and  Western  branches  ceased  to  do  business  as  banks; 
no  bank  notes  or  bills  were  seen  but  those  bearing  the  signatures  of 
the  president  and  his  principal  cashier,  and  none  of  these  payable  at 
Southern  and  Western  branches.  The  profits  of  the  stockholders 
became  inconsiderable,  and  the  prospect  of  a  renewed  charter  was 
lost  in  the  actual  view  of  the  inactivity  and  uselessness  of  the  bank 
in  the  South  and  West.  Mr.  Cheves  retired.  He  withdrew  from  an 
institution  he  had  saved  from  bankruptcy,  but  which  he  could  not 
render  useful  to  the  South  and  West ;  and  then  ensued  a  set  of 
operations  for  enabling  the  bank  to  do  the  things  which  Congress 
had  refused  to  do  for  it;  that  is  to  say,  to  avoid  the  operation  of 
the  fourteenth  section,  and  so  much  of  the  twelfth  fundamental 
article  as  related  to  the  signature  of  the  notes  and  bills  of  the  bank. 
These  operations  resulted  in  the  invention  of  the  branch  bank  orders. 
These  orders,  now  flooding  the  country,  circulating  as  notes,  and 
considered  every  where  as  gold  and  silver  (because  they  are  volun 
tarily  cashed  at  several  branches,  and  erroneously  received  at  every 
land-office  and  custom-house),  have  given  to  the  bank  its  present 
apparent  prosperity,  its  temporary  popularity,  and  its  delusive  cry  of 
a  sound  and  uniform  currency.  This  is  my  narrative ;  an  appalling 
one,  it  must  be  admitted;  but  let  it  stand  for  nothing  if  not  sus 
tained  by  the  proof." 

It  is  often  said  that  Binney,  Webster,  and  Wirt  united 
in  an  opinion  in  favor  of  the  entire  legality  of  the  orders, 
but  this  seems  to  me  to  be  far  overstating  the  case.  It  is 
true  that  five  years  before,  in  March,  1827,  at  the  time 
when  the  orders  were  about  to  be  first  put  into  operation, 
Binney  wrote  an  opinion  *  (in  which  Webster  and  Wirt 
concurred),  in  answer  to  a  letter  of  Nicholas  Biddle,  and 
expressed  the  view  that  the  drafts  about  which  his  opinion 
was  asked  were  legal  and  that  their  issue  constituted  "  an 

*  Printed  in  Reports  of  Congress,  House  Reports,  460,  22d 
Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  50,  51. 


CONTEST    OVER    RECHARTER  215 

ordinary  banking  operation/'  and  was  "  within  the  powers 
of  every  banking  corporation;"  but  this  opinion  was  given 
with  absolutely  no  knowledge  of  vital  elements  of  the 
problem  which  presented  itself  to  the  public  man  in  1832. 

Nicholas  Biddle's  letter  stating  the  facts  upon  which 
Binney  was  asked  his  opinion  contains  most  naturally  no 
intimation  at  all  of  that  which  had  by  1832  become  the 
chief  fact  in  the  matter, — that  the  drafts  constituted  a 
currency, — nor  the  now  well-known  fact  that  such  was 
the  very  intention  of  the  bank  directory.  They  were  un 
doubtedly  a  "  currency  device,"  and  therefore  "  were 
made  to  resemble  bank-notes  as  closely  as  possible  in  de 
sign,  color,  and  texture,"  and  so  successfully  was  this 
accomplished  that  very  few  men  "  ever  noticed  the  differ 
ence."*  The  mere  issuing  of  them,  however,  as  a  means 
of  settling  exchanges,  was  the  point  on  which  stress  was 
laid,  without  a  hint  of  the  underlying  intention,  and 
Biddle's  letter  contains  little  but  the  following  statement 
as  to  the  intentions  of  the  directors  in  the  matter.  The 
officers  of  the  bank  at  a  distance  were,  he  wrote,  in  the 
"  habit  of  drawing  checks  on  the  bank  for  the  accommo 
dation  of  the  community.  These  checks  .  .  .  have  gen 
erally  been  in  large  sums.  It  is  proposed  .  .  .  that  the 
officers  shall  be  instructed  to  issue  these  checks  for  smaller 
sums  .  .  .  whenever  requested  by  the  dealers  with  those 
offices."  It  was  therefore  most  natural  that  Binney — 
both  he  and  Webster  were  at  the  time  members  of  the 
board  of  directors  of  the  central  institution — thought  it 
immaterial  "  whether  the  drafts  be  for  large  sums  or 
small,"  and  that  he  based  his  answer  upon  a  consideration 
of  the  drafts  merely  as  a  means  of  facilitating  the  ex 
changes  between  different  sections. 

Had  he  been  asked  his  opinion  again  in  1832,  or  could 
he  have  foreseen  in  1827  how  largely  the  drafts  were  to 

*  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  p.  119,  and  see  pp.  125,  126. 


216       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

serve  the  functions  of  a  currency,  he  would  hardly  have 
written  that  "  as  there  is  no  substantial  difference  between 
the  checks  or  drafts  heretofore  drawn  at  the  different 
offices  upon  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  and  those 
which  it  is  proposed  hereafter  to  draw,  .  .  .  there  can 
be  no  legal  objection  to  them.  .  .  .  Checks  or  drafts  of  a 
similar  description  between  banks  and  their  branches  and 
between  independent  banks,  have  been  coeval  with  these 
institutions  in  the  United  States." 

Another  assertion  often  made  is  that  a  decision  in 
favor  of  the  legality  of  the  orders  had  been  rendered  by 
the  Circuit  Court  of  the  United  States  at  Philadelphia, 
but  the  real  fact  is  that  a  single  judge  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court  had  in  a  charge  *  to  a  jury  sustained  an 
indictment  against  a  defendant  for  knowingly  uttering, 
passing,  and  publishing  a  forged  branch  draft.  But  this 
merely  decides  that  a  branch  had  a  right  to  draw  checks  or 
drafts  on  the  mother  bank  (which  could  unquestionably 
be  done  in  the  bank's  exchange  operations),  and  that  it 
was  forgery  to  imitate  them. 

It  has  no  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  legality  of  the 
drafts  as  a  currency;  and  the  defendant  was  guilty  be 
cause  the  eighteenth  section  of  the  charter  had  expressly 
made  it  a  crime  not  only  to  forge  any  order,  check,  or 
draft,  but  equally  so  to  be  concerned  in  passing  any  such 
forged  instrument;  he  would  (I  conceive)  have  been 
guilty  under  the  common  law  for  being  concerned  in 
passing  the  forged  draft  or  check  even  of  an  individual. 
The  truth  is  that  the  question  of  the  legality  of  the  drafts 
as  a  currency  was  one  which  hardly  could  have  been 
brought  up  for  judicial  decision,  but  possibly  it  would  be 


*  United  States  v.  Shellmire,  I  Baldwin,  p.  370.  Benton  attacked 
this  decision  and  insisted  that  it  was  not  law.  I  cannot  see  why  he 
took  this  trouble,  unless  to  controvert  some  of  the  mere  opinions  of 
the  judge. 


CONTEST    OVER    RECHARTER  217 

most  nearly  approached,  if  we  imagine  the  law  of  to-day 
taxing  all  currency  except  specified  sorts  to  have  been  then 
in  existence  and  an  effort  made  to  tax  these  drafts  as  cur 
rency  ;  can  it  be  doubted  that  they  would  have  been  held 
taxable? 

McDuffie,  in  the  minority  report  of  the  first  (or  Clay 
ton)  committee  of  investigation,  took  the  ground — and 
this  is  in  reality  the  extremely  narrow  position  which  all 
defenders  of  the  drafts  are  forced  to  assume — that, 
though  the  orders  were  used  so  largely  as  currency,  they 
were  in  reality  mere  ordinary  drafts,  and  "  the  bank  can 
not  be  justly  made  responsible  for  the  use  wrhich  the  public 
may.  choose  to  make  of  the  drafts."  But  this  view  did 
not  at  all  meet  the  point  to  be  considered  by  a  legislator, 
and  even  conceding  that  they  were  absolutely  authorized, 
the  question  arose  at  once  whether  they  ought  not  to  be 
forbidden ;  and  it  is  noteworthy  that,  despite  the  elaborate 
defence  of  them,  the  bill  subsequently  reported  to  the 
House,  and  which  Jackson  vetoed,  contained  a  clause  to 
prohibit  the  orders  as  theretofore  issued,  and  required 
that  bills  issued  by  the  branches  should  be  payable  by  such 
branches.  It  provided  at  the  same  time  that  they  should 
be  payable  only  at  the  branch  where  issued,  which  was 
doubtless  a  valuable  concession  to  the  bank. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  at  any  length  the  debate 
upon  the  bill  for  rechartering  the  bank,  and  it  will  be 
enough  to  say  that  Benton  not  only  proposed  numerous 
amendments  in  accordance  with  the  plan  of  which  he  tells 
us  in  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View,"  but  spoke  also  very  often 
and  at  length.  He  inveighed,  for  instance,  against  the 
time  which  was  selected  to  present  the  application  for 
recharter,  against  the  giving  of  such  valuable  privileges 
to  any  selected  individuals,  against  the  right  to  establish 
branches  in  the  States  at  the  will  of  the  bank;  and  he 
moved  the  repeal  of  the  provision  restricting  Congress 
from  creating  other  banks,  an  amendment  to  prohibit  all 


218       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

federal  officers  and  aliens  from  holding  stock  in  the  in 
stitution,  and  a  provision  to  make  the  stockholders  liable 
to  the  amount  of  their  stock  on  the  failure  of  the  bank  to 
redeem  its  notes  in  specie.  He  took  this  idea  from  the 
Scotch  banking  system,  and  he  wrote  in  later  life  *  that 
he  was  already  at  this  time  convinced  that  the  bank  was 
insolvent. 

He  was,  moreover,  of  opinion  that  the  institution  had 
very  improperly  begun  to  extend  its  credits  at  once  upon 
the  criticisms  of  it  in  Jackson's  first  message.  He  insisted 
that  it  had  done  this  to  such  an  extent  as  to  increase  its 
loans  from  forty  million  to  seventy  million,  and  that  this 
had  been  done  mainly  in  the  West  and  with  a  view  to 
create  an  interest  in  favor  of  recharter. 

Benton  thought  the  bank  had  long  taken  an  active 
part  in  politics,  and  in  1832  ridiculed  the  opposite  con 
tention.  "  As  for  the  story,"  he  said,f  "  that  the  present 
Bank  of  the  United  States  is  not  a  political  engine,  it  is 
a  story  for  nurses  to  tell  and  children  to  believe.  It  is  a 
political  engine,  and  a  tremendous  one,  too !  Its  power  is 
terrific  and  irresistible,  having  the  secret,  ramified,  and 
despotic  organization  of  the  Jesuits,  with  the  revenues  of 
an  empire.  No  individual  can  stand  before  it.  But  one 
man  in  America  can  now  stand  before  it,  and  him  it  now 
defies  to  the  encounter.  If  victorious  now,  it  is  conqueror 
forever."  And  in  another  instance  he  had  occasion  to 
express  his  views  upon  this  subject. 

In  1834  Tyler  presented  a  favorable  report  upon  the 
bank  from  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Senate,  in  which 


*  View,  i.,  p.  241.  The  bank  was  not  then  insolvent,  but  Benton 
was  not  far  wrong,  for  the  historian  of  the  bank  says  that  the  in 
stitution  was  "  in  a  very  grave  position"  by  March,  1832,  and  Ben- 
ton's  figures  on  the  extent  of  the  expansion  were  substantially  cor 
rect  (Catterall's  Second  Bank,  p.  150,  and  see  p.  145  et  seq.). 

f  C  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  I,  1831-32,  p.  973. 


CONTEST    OVER   RECHARTER  219 

Benton's  name  and  those  of  Jackson  and  Van  Buren  were 
quoted — evidently  with  great  gusto — as  having  promoted 
the  establishment  of  branch  banks.  Upon  the  reading 
of  this  report  Benton  at  once  arose  and  the  following 
scene  took  place,  which  is  in  a  high  degree  characteristic 
of  his  methods.  He  always  struck  while  the  iron  was 
hot,  and  sought  to  meet  an  accusation  instantly  and 
in  the  very  same  presence  in  which  it  was  made  by 
showing  his  opponent  to  be  flagrantly  in  the  wrong. 
Taking  the  floor  in  this  instance  immediately  after  Tyler 
had,  with  a  good  deal  of  flourish,  read  his  report,  Benton 
said: 

"  His  own  name  was  made  to  figure  in  that  report,  in  very  good 
company  to  be  sure,  that  of  President  Jackson,  Vice-President  Van 
Buren  and  Senator  Grundy.  It  seems  that  we  have  all  been  detected 
in  something  that  deserves  exposure,  in  the  offense  of  aiding  our 
respective  constituents,  or  fellow-citizens,  in  obtaining  branch  banks 
to  be  located  in  our  respective  States;  and  upon  this  detection  the 
assertion  is  made  that  these  branches  were  not  extended  to  these 
States  for  political  effect,  when  the  charter  was  nearly  run  out,  but 
in  good  faith,  and  upon  our  application,  to  aid  the  business  of  the 
country.  Mr.  B.  said,  it  was  true  that  he  had  forwarded  a  petition 
from  the  merchants  of  St.  Louis,  about  1826  or  '27,  soliciting  a 
branch  at  that  place;  and  he  had  accompanied  it  by  a  letter,  as  he 
had  been  requested  to  do,  sustaining  and  supporting  their  request ; 
and  bearing  the  testimony  to  their  characters  as  men  of  business  and 
property  which  the  occasion  and  the  truth  required.  He  did  this 
for  merchants  who  were  his  political  enemies,  and  he  did  it  readily 
and  cordially,  as  a  representative  ought  to  act  for  his  constituents, 
whether  they  are  for  him  or  against  him  in  the  elections.  So  far  so 
good;  but  the  allegation  of  the  report  is,  that  the  branch  at  St. 
Louis  was  established  upon  this  petition  and  this  letter,  and  there 
fore  was  not  established  with  political  views,  but  purely  and  simply 
for  business  purposes.  Now,  said  Mr.  B.,  I  have  a  question  to  put 
to  the  senator  from  Virginia  (Mr.  Tyler),  who  has  made  the  report 
for  the  committee.  It  is  this :  whether  the  president  or  directors  of 
the  bank  had  informed  him  that  General  Cadwalader  had  been  sent 
as  an  agent  to  St.  Louis  to  examine  the  place  and  to  report  upon  its 
ability  to  sustain  a  branch  ? 

"  Mr.  Tyler  rose,  and  said  that  he  had  heard  nothing  at  the 


220       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

bank  upon  the  subject  of  Gen.  Cadwalader  having  been  sent  to  St. 
Louis  or  any  report  upon  the  place  being  made. 

"  Then,  said  Mr.  Benton,  resuming  his  speech,  the  committee 
has  been  treated  unworthily,  scurvily,  basely  by  the  bank!  It  has 
been  made  the  instrument  to  report  an  untruth  to  the  Senate  and  to 
the  American  people;  and  neither  the  Senate  nor  that  part  of  the 
American  people  who  chance  to  be  in  this  chamber  should  be  per 
mitted  to  leave  their  places  until  that  falsehood  was  exposed. 

"  Sir,  said  Mr.  B.,  addressing  the  Vice-President,  the  president, 
and  directors  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States,  upon  receiving  the 
merchants'  petition  and  my  letter,  did  not  send  a  branch  to  St.  Louis ! 
They  sent  an  agent  there,  in  the  person  of  General  Cadwalader,  to 
examine  the  place  and  to  report  upon  its  mercantile  capabilities  and 
wants;  and  upon  that  report  the  decision  was  made,  and  made 
against  the  request  of  the  merchants,  and  that  upon  the  ground  that 
the  business  of  the  place  would  not  justify  the  establishment  of  a 
branch.  The  petition  from  the  merchants  came  to  Mr.  B.  while  he 
was  here,  in  his  seat ;  it  was  forwarded  from  this  place  to  Phila 
delphia;  the  agent  made  his  visit  to  St.  Louis  before  he  (Mr.  B.) 
returned;  and  when  he  got  home,  in  the  spring  or  summer,  the 
merchants  informed  him  of  what  had  occurred ;  and  that  they  had 
received  a  letter  from  the  directory  of  the  bank  informing  them  that 
a  branch  could  not  be  granted;  and  there  the  whole  affair,  so  far 
as  the  petition  and  the  letter  were  concerned,  died  away.  But,  said 
Mr.  B.,  it  happened  just  in  that  time  that  I  made  my  first  demonstra 
tion — struck  my  first  blow — against  the  bank ;  and  the  next  news 
that  I  had  from  the  merchants  was,  that  another  letter  had  been 
received  from  the  bank,  without  any  new  petition  having  been  sent, 
and  without  any  new  report  upon  the  business  of  the  place,  inform 
ing  them  that  the  branch  was  to  come !  And  come  it  did,  and 
immediately  went  to  work  to  gain  men  and  presses,  to  govern  the 
politics  of  the  State,  to  exclude  him  (Mr.  B.)  from  re-election  to  the 
Senate ;  and  to  oppose  every  candidate,  from  governor  to  constable, 
who  was  not  for  the  bank.  The  branch  had  even  furnished  a  list 
to  the  mother  bank,  through  some  of  its  officers,  of  the  names  and 
residences  of  the  active  citizens  in  every  part  of  the  State ;  and  to 
these,  and  to  their  great  astonishment  at  the  familiarity  and  con 
descension  of  the  high  directory  in  Philadelphia,  myriads  of  bank 
documents  were  sent,  with  a  minute  description  of  name  and  place, 
postage  free.  At  the  presidential  election  of  1832,  the  State  was 
deluged  with  these  favors.  At  his  own  re-elections  to  the  Senate, 
the  two  last,  the  branch  bank  was  in  the  field  against  him  every 
where,  and  in  every  form;  its  directors  traversing  the  State,  going 


CONTEST  OVER  RECHARTER      221 

to  the  houses  of  the  members  of  the  General  Assembly  after  they 
were  elected,  in  almost  every  county,  over  a  State  of  sixty  thousand 
square  miles;  and  then  attending  the  legislature  as  lobby  members, 
to  oppose  him.  Of  these  things  Mr.  B.  had  never  spoken  in  public 
before,  nor  should  he  have  done  it  now,  had  it  not  been  for  the  false 
hood  attempted  to  be  palmed  upon  the  Senate  through  the  instru 
mentality  of  its  committee.  But  having  been  driven  into  it,  he  would 
mention  another  circumstance,  which  also  he  had  never  named  in 
public  before,  but  which  would  throw  light  upon  the  establishment 
of  the  branch  in  St.  Louis  and  the  kind  of  business  which  it  had  to 
perform.  An  immense  edition  of  a  review  of  his  speech  on  the  veto 
message  was  circulated  through  his  State  on  the  eve  of  his  last 
election.  It  bore  the  impress  of  the  bank  foundry  in  Philadelphia, 
and  was  intended  to  let  the  people  of  Missouri  see  that  he  (Mr.  B.) 
was  a  very  unfit  person  to  represent  them :  and  afterwards  it  was 
seen  from  the  report  of  the  government  directors  to  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  that  seventy-five  thousand  copies  of  that  review 
were  paid  for  by  the  Bank  of  the  United  States !"  * 

The  bill  for  recharter  passed  both  Houses,  but  was 
soon  met  by  the  veto,  which  has  been  well  described  as  "  a 
curious  pot-pourri  of  strength  and  weakness,  of  sound 
statesmanship  and  cheap  demagogism,  of  shrewd  politics 
and  silly  commonplaces."  Benton  says  of  the  veto  session 
that  it  was  "  the  most  fiery  and  eventful  session  that  I 
had  then  seen — or  since  seen  except  one" — and  during 
the  debate  upon  the  veto  he  and  Clay  fell  into  such  an 
angry  controversy  that  it  is  likely  the  instance  constitutes 
one  of  those  in  which  a  duel  between  them  is  said  to 
have  been  averted  only  by  the  exertions  of  friends,  f 

Clay  had  described  Jackson  as  being  in  his  contest 
with  the  bank  much  in  the  position  of  the  eagle  in  the 
fable  which  had  by  mistake  carried  off  a  cat  in  its  talons, 
but  was  soon  glad  to  be  released  so  as  to  escape  the  cat's 
sharp  claws.  To  this  Benton  replied :  "  General  Jackson 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xi.,  part  I,  1834-35,  PP-  24-26.  See  also  View,  i., 
pp.  482,  483. 

t  General  F.  P.  Blair,  Jr.'s,  Address. 


222       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

is  the  eagle ;  the  bank  is  the  cat ;  the  parley  is  the  proposi 
tion  of  the  bank  to  the  President  to  sign  its  charter,  and 
it  will  support  him  for  the  presidency — if  not,  will  keep 
his  claws  stuck  in  his  sides.  But  Jackson,  different  from 
the  eagle  with  his  cat,  will  have  no  compromise  or  bargain 
with  the  bank.  One  or  the  other  shall  fall,  and  be  dashed 
into  atoms!" 

There  was  nothing  to  quarrel  over  in  this  side-play, 
but  Benton  intimated  later  in  the  debate  that  Clay  was 
\vanting  in  courtesy  to  the  President  in  some  of  his  criti 
cisms;  and  to  this  Clay  replied  that  Benton  was  not  the 
person  to  whom  he  should  go  for  advice  as  to  a  question  of 
decorum,  then  referred  in  very  pointed  language  to  Ben- 
ton's  early  encounter  with  Jackson,  and  closed  by  saying 
that  he  had  never  predicted  that  in  the  event  of  Jackson's 
election  as  President  it  would  be  necessary  to  legislate 
with  dirks  and  pistols  at  our  sides. 

Clay  appears  to  have  jauntily  imagined  that  the  mat 
ter  would  end  here,  but,  if  so,  he  little  knew  Benton.  The 
latter  at  once  replied  that  the  story  of  this  alleged  predic 
tion  by  him  had  been  anonymously  made  in  Missouri  and 
had  lately  been  stuck  up  by  night  in  placards  on  the  posts 
and  walls  of  Washington ;  heretofore  he  had,  despite  all 
his  efforts,  been  unable  to  find  any  one  to  father  it;  "  but 
since  it  is  in  open  day  introduced  into  this  chamber,  I  am 
enabled  to  meet  it  as  it  deserves  to  be  met.  I  see  who  it  is 
that  uses  it  here,  and  to  his  face  [pointing  to  Mr.  Clay] 
I  am  enabled  to  pronounce  it,  as  I  now  do,  an  atrocious 
calumny." 

Clay  replied  by  asking  whether  the  gentleman  can 
"  look  to  me,  and  say  that  he  never  used  the  language 
attributed  to  him  in  the  placard  which  he  refers  to?  ... 
Can  you  look  me  in  the  face,  sir  [addressing  Mr.  Benton] , 
and  say  that  you  never  used  that  language  out  of  the  State 
of  Missouri  ?" 

"  Mr.  Benton.      I  look,  sir,  and  repeat  that  it  is  an 


CONTEST  OVER  RECHARTER      223 

atrocious  calumny;  and  I  will  pin  it  to  him  who  uses  it 
here. 

"  Mr.  Clay.  Then  I  declare  before  the  Senate  that 
you  said  to  me  the  very  words — 

"  [Mr.  Benton  in  his  place,  while  Mr.  Clay  was  yet 
speaking,  several  times  loudly  repeated  the  word  '  false, 
false,  false!'] 

"  Mr.  Clay  said,  I  fling  back  the  charge  of  atrocious 
calumny  upon  the  Senator  from  Missouri." 

Calls  to  order  here  interrupted  the  quarrel,  and  Benton 
soon  apologized  "  to  the  Senate  for  the  manner  in  which 
I  have  spoken ;  but  not  to  the  Senator  from  Kentucky." 
Clay  offered  a  similar  apology.*  Nothing  has  reached  me 
to  show  in  what  manner  the  quarrel  was  composed,  but  it 
is  difficult  to  suppose  that  in  that  day  the  matter  rested 
where  the  debate  left  it. 

Whatever  any  one  may  think  of  the  validity  of  the 
views  advanced  in  the  veto,  it  took  wonderfully  with  the 
people,  and  the  election  was  an  overwhelming  defeat  for 
the  forces  opposing  Jackson.  Rarely  have  leaders  more 
completely  failed  to  foresee  the  trend  of  public  opinion 
than  did  the  friends  of  the  bank  in  this  instance.  Clay 
and  all  of  them  were  supremely  confident,  and  Nicholas 
Biddle  thought  that  Jackson's  veto  message  exhibited  the 
"  chained  fury  of  a  panther  biting  the  bars  of  his  cage." 

During  the  campaign,  Benton  writes, f  the  newspapers 
opposed  to  Jackson  (i.e.,  a  great  majority  of  the  whole 
number  published)  contained  a  general  register  under  the 
caption  "  Effects  of  the  Veto,"  in  which  such  telling  items 
as  the  following  were  contained : 

*  This  dispute  is  given  at  much  greater  length  in  the  View,  i.,  pp. 
256,  263,  264.  See  also  C.  D.,  vol.  viii.,  part  I,  1831-32,  pp.  1294- 
1296.  The  slight  differences  between  the  accounts  do  not  appear  to 
me  material,  though  Benton  complained  in  the  Senate  on  December 
22,  1834,  that  the  account  in  the  Debates  was  false. 

f  View,  i.,  pp.  280,  281. 


224       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  We  learn  from  Cincinnati  that,  within  two  days  after  the  veto 
reached  that  city,  building-bricks  fell  from  five  dollars  to  three 
dollars  per  thousand.  A  general  consternation  is  reported  to  have 
pervaded  the  city." — "  Cincinnati  farmers  look  here !  We  are 
credibly  informed  that  several  merchants  in  this  city,  in  making 
contracts  for  their  winter  supplies  of  pork,  are  offering  to  contract 
to  pay  two  dollars  fifty  cents  per  hundred  if  Clay  is  elected,  and 
one  dollar  fifty  cents  if  Jackson  is  elected.  Such  is  the  effect 
of  the  veto.  This  is  something  that  people  can  understand." — 
"'  Lexington,  Kentucky,  July  25th.  A  call,  signed  by  fifty  citizens 
of  great  respectability,  formerl}'  supporters  of  General  Jackson, 
announced  their  renunciation  of  him,  and  invited  all  others  in 
the  like  situation  with  themselves  to  assemble  in  public  meeting  and 
declare  their  sentiments.  A  large  and  very  respectable  meeting 
ensued." 

From  the  samples  of  these  items  which  Benton  re 
produces  it  is  evident  that  reports  of  defections  from 
Jackson  by  his  former  supporters  were  regarded  as  of 
particular  importance.  Benton  attributes  all  the  alarm  to 
the  efforts  of  the  bank,  and  writes  that  it  was  "  a  wicked 
and  infamous  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  great  moneyed 
corporation  to  govern  the  election  by  operating  on  the 
business  and  the  fears  of  the  people — destroying  some  and 
alarming  others." 

Nothing  has  reached  me  to  show  the  part  taken  by 
Benton  in  the  campaign,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
in  some  way  he  made  himself  very  active.  He  was  en 
gaged  at  the  same  time  in  a  canvass  for  his  own  re-elec 
tion  to  the  Senate,  but  the  actual  choice  by  the  Legislature 
was  not  made  until  after  the  presidential  election,  when 
he  had  forty-six  votes  against  twelve  for  his  competitor, 
Abraham  J.  Williams.  This  was  one  of  the  elections  at 
which,  as  has  been  seen,  he  maintained  that  the  bank  had 
actively  opposed  him. 


CHAPTER     XIV 

THE   REMOVAL  OF   THE  DEPOSITS THE   PANIC   SESSION 

THE  EXPUNGING  RESOLUTION 

JACKSON'S  first  message  after  the  election  contained 
an  intimation  that  the  bank  was  insolvent  and  not  a  safe 
depository  for  the  public  moneys,  and  recommended  a 
thorough  investigation  of  the  institution  by  Congress,  as 
well  as  the  sale  of  the  seven  millions  of  its  stock  held  by 
the  United  States.  A  bill  for  this  latter  purpose  was, 
however,  easily  defeated,  and  an  investigation  by  the 
House  resulted  in  another  favorable  report. 

The  time  of  Congress  at  this  session  was  chiefly  taken 
up  by  the  dangers  of  nullification  and  by  the  passage  of  the 
Compromise  Tariff  and  other  measures  growing  out  of 
the  Southern  troubles,  and  the  bank  question  was  not 
very  much  in  evidence.  But  Jackson  had  probably  made 
up  his  mind  that  the  bank  must  be  entirely  deprived  of  the 
vast  powers  it  derived  from  its  connection  with  the  gov 
ernment,  and  that  all  possibility  of  its  recharter  in  the 
future  must  be  destroyed.  Schouler  thinks  that  Jackson 
was  "  ignorant  and  miscalculating  on  so  intricate  a  sub 
ject"  as  that  of  the  bank,  but  gives  him  credit  for  having 
"  that  instinct  of  the  situation  which  in  the  political  sense 
is  worth  more  than  plodding  wisdom :"  he  appreciated 
that  "  the  time  had  come  for  the  United  States  to  start 
on  a  new  financial  path  [and]  to  break  the  web  of  cor 
porate  favoritism  which  was  becoming  a  corded  net  upon 
its  growing  shoulders." 

Jackson  did  not  then  let  the  matter  rest  with  the 
Congressional  report  upon  the  bank's  affairs,  which  the 
deemed  most  superficial  and  unfair,  but  instituted  an 
investigation,  as  he  had  a  right  to  do,  by  the  government 

15  225 


226       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

directors ;  and  they  reported  large  expenditures  for  print 
ing  and  circulating  public  speeches  and  reports  in  regard 
to  the  bank,  and,  further,  the  creation  of  a  small  executive 
committee  in  the  control  of  the  president  and  which  in 
effect  conducted  the  affairs  of  the  institution, — to  the 
exclusion  of  the  government  directors. 

At  this  time,  too,  the  bank  is  now  thought  to  have 
shown  financial  weakness  in  its  efforts  to  delay  the  pay 
ment  of  the  three-per-cent.  loan  which  fell  due  in  July 
of  1833.  This  had  made  a  great  impression  on  Jackson, 
who  declared  "the  bank  is  already  broken;  for  Nick 
Biddle,  proud  and  high-spirited  as  he  is,  would  never  have 
begged  the  extension  of  those  three  per  cents.,  had  it 
been  otherwise."  * 

It  seems  that  the  plan  of  ceasing  to  use  the  bank  as 
the  public  depository — commonly  known  as  "  the  removal 
of  the  deposits" — was  discussed  during  the  presidential 
campaign  of  1832,  but  it  is  not  clear  just  when  it  was  first 
conceived,  nor  are  authorities  agreed  as  to  who  was  its 
author.  Benton  says  f  that  the  measure  was  the  Presi 
dent's  own,  and  there  can  be  no  question  that  he  was  the 
power  that  carried  it  out.  Indeed,  he  had  little  support, 
except  from  Taney,  Barry,  Kendall,  and  Blair,  while  the 
majority  of  the  Cabinet  and  of  the  Democratic  leaders 
were  entirely  opposed,  fearing  hopeless  party  dissensions. 

*  Schooler's  United  States,  iv.,  pp.  134,  137.  Jackson's  opinion 
is  quoted  from  Kendall's  Autobiography,  p.  374,  etc.  This  is  possibly 
another  instance  of  his  "  instinct  of  the  situation,"  for  Prof.  Sumner 
writes  (Jackson,  268),  "  in  regard  to  the  three  per  cents.,  it  is  certain 
that  Biddle  wanted  to  defer  the  payment  for  the  sake  of  the  bank. 
He  was  embarrassed  already  by  the  debt  of  the  Western  branches, 
which  had  been  produced  by  the  operation  of  the  branch  drafts. 
Their  effect  was  just  beginning  to  tell  seriously."  This  view,  more 
over,  except  as  to  the  cause  which  had  produced  the  embarrassment, 
is  fully  borne  out  by  Prof.  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  pp.  268  et  seq., 
146-150. 

t  View,  i.,  p.  374.    Catterall's  Second  Bank,  p.  288. 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  227 

Benton  was  absent  in  Virginia  during  the  time  the  meas 
ure  was  taking  shape,  and  received  the  first  intimation  of 
it  towards  the  end  of  September  from  a  copy  of  the  Globe, 
which  not  only  contained  Jackson's  famous  paper  read 
to  the  Cabinet  on  September  18,  but  announced  also  the 
actual  issuing  of  the  order  for  the  removal.  He  writes 
in  the  "  View"  : 

"  I  felt  an  emotion  of  the  moral  sublime  at  beholding  such  an 
instance  of  civic  heroism.  Here  was  a  President,  not  bred  up  in  the 
political  profession,  taking  a  great  step  upon  his  own  responsibility 
from  which  many  of  his  advisers  shrunk;  and  magnanimously,  in 
the  act  itself,  releasing  all  from  the  peril  that  he  himself  encountered, 
and  boldly  taking  the  whole  upon  himself.  I  say  peril ;  for  if  the 
bank  should  conquer,  there  was  an  end  to  the  political  prospects  of 
every  public  man  concurring  in  the  removal.  He  believed  the  act  to 
be  necessary ;  and  believing  that,  he  did  the  act — leaving  the  conse 
quences  to  God  and  the  country.  I  felt  that  a  great  blow  had  been 
struck,  and  that  a  great  contest  must  come  on,  which  could  only  be 
crowned  with  success  by  acting  up  to  the  spirit  with  which  it  had 
commenced.  And  I  repaired  to  Washington  at  the  approach  of  the 
session  with  a  full  determination  to  stand  by  the  President,  which  I 
believed  to  be  standing  by  the  country;  and  to  do  my  part  in  justify 
ing  his  conduct,  and  in  exposing  and  resisting  the  powerful  com 
bination  which  it  was  certain  would  be  formed  against  him." 

This  forecast  of  a  coming  struggle  was  prophetic,  for 
even  the  session  of  the  veto  paled  before  the  famous 
"  Panic  Session,"  which  followed  in  1834  upon  the  re 
moval  of  the  public  deposits.  There  was  much  financial 
disturbance  and  public  distress  throughout  the  country,  all 
of  which  the  friends  of  Jackson  charged  to  the  designs 
of  the  bank  to  force  the  government  to  return  to  it  ;*  while 
mammoth  petitions  from  many  parts  of  the  country,  some 
of  them  containing  as  many  as  six  thousand  and  even  ten 

*  Still  more  "  instinct  of  the  situation,"  for  this  view  also  is 
largely  borne  out  by  modern  writers  friendly  to  the  bank.  See,  e.g., 
Prof.  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  pp.  314-331,  343.  346,  426;  Henry 
Adams's  Life  of  Gallatin,  pp.  658-662. 


228       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

thousand  signatures,  were  presented  by  the  score  to  Con 
gress  and  to  the  President,  urging  the  restoration  of  the 
deposits  and  charging  the  distress  entirely  to  their  re 
moval. 

In  the  Senate,  the  chief  field  selected  for  this  agitation, 
the  friends  of  the  President  were  few  in  numbers  and  had 
to  contend  during  the  whole  long  session  in  a  hopeless 
minority  against  "  the  prodigious,  scathing  invective  of 
American  statesmen  the  most  talented  and  powerful  who 
ever  united  in  opposition,"  for — to  say  nothing  of  lesser 
lights — Clay  and  Webster  and  Calhoun  had  for  the  time 
being  buried  their  differences  and  were  vying  with  one  an 
other  only  in  their  attacks  upon  the  President.  The  labors 
of  those  who  defended  the  administration  were  enormous, 
and  Benton,  who  was  the  leading  man  among  them,  writes 
that  he  spoke  over  thirty  times  and  others  as  often. 

His  speeches  do  not  seem  to  have  been  as  long  as  usual, 
but  there  was  plenty  of  fire  and  aggressiveness  in  him, 
and  at  one  time,  when  Clay's  resolutions  of  condemnation 
of  the  President  were  under  consideration,  he  moved  a 
substitute  that "  Nicholas  Biddle  .  .  .  be  summoned  to  ap 
pear  at  the  bar  of  the  Senate  ...  to  be  examined  on  oath 
touching  the  causes  of  the  late  large  curtailment  of  debts 
due  to  the  Bank  .  .  .  and  the  application  of  the  moneys 
of  the  Bank  to  electioneering  and  political  objects."  They 
were  indeed  very  giants  of  pluck  and  endurance  and  seem 
to  have  had  a  supreme  confidence  of  ultimate  triumph, 
finding  much  comfort  in  the  state  of  parties  in  the  other 
House,  where  a  "  majority  of  fifty,  fresh  from  the  elec 
tions  of  the  people,  and  strong  in  their  good  cause," 
seemed  to  promise  that  the  more  slowly  changing  Senate 
would  also  before  long  be  of  their  way  of  thinking. 

Benton  writes  *  that  he  often  saw  the  President  during 

*  View,  i.,  p.  424.  Jackson  seems  to  have  been  by  no  means  mild 
with  the  delegations  which  called  upon  him  personally  (Schouler's 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  229 

this  time  of  trial,  "always  during  the  night  (for  I  had 
no  time  to  quit  my  seat  during  the  day)  ;  and  never  saw 
him  appear  more  truly  heroic  and  grand  than  at  this  time. 
He  was  perfectly  mild  in  his  language,  cheerful  in  his 
temper,  firm  in  his  conviction,  and  confident  in  his  reliance 
on  the  power  in  which  he  put  his  trust.  I  have  seen  him 
in  a  great  many  situations  of  peril,  and  even  of  despera 
tion,  both  civil  and  military,  and  always  saw  him  firmly 
relying  upon  the  success  of  the  right  through  God  and  the 
people;  and  never  saw  that  confidence  more  firm  and 
steady  than  now.  After  giving  him  an  account  of  the 
day's  proceedings,  talking  over  the  state  of  the  contest, 
and  ready  to  return  to  sleep  a  little,  and  prepare  much, 
for  the  combats  of  the  next  day,  he  would  usually  say: 
*  We  shall  whip  them  yet.  The  people  will  take  it  up 
after  a  while.' ' 

That  the  President's  friends  made  the  best  in  this 
desperate  party  struggle  of  every  tactical  error  of  their 
opponents  is  clear;  and  not  a  few  such  were  made,  for 
the  bank's  supporters  were  throughout  the  whole  contest 
absolutely  without  appreciation  of  the  popular  feeling. 
Benton  seems  to  have  had  usually  a  very  clear  perception 
of  the  blunders  his  opponents  were  making,  and  was 
doubtless  always  on  the  watch  to  take  advantage  of  them. 

It  was  during  the  Panic  Session  that  he  first  intro 
duced  the  famous  resolution  to  expunge  a  part  of  the 
Senate's  journal,  and  here  was  a  case  in  point  where  he 
thought  a  blunder  had  been  made.  The  Senate  and  the 
President  had  had  more  than  one  passage  at  arms,  and  on 
the  28th  day  of  March,  1834,  the  Senate  had  resolved 
"  that  the  President  in  the  late  executive  proceedings  in 
relation  to  the  public  revenue  [the  removal  of  the  de- 
History  of  the  United  States,  iv.,  p.  161).  Benton's  motion  to  call 
Nicholas  Biddle  to  the  bar  of  the  Senate  is  to  be  found  in  C.  D., 
vol.  x.,  1833-34,  P-  139- 


230       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

posits],  has  assumed  upon  himself  authority  and  power 
not  conferred  by  the  Constitution  and  laws,  but  in  deroga 
tion  of  both." 

This  resolution  was  passed  only  after  being  several 
times  amended  and  rendered  thus  vague  and  indefinite 
by  Clay  and  its  other  sponsors,  and  there  was  grave  doubt 
as  to  the  constitutional  right — to  say  nothing  of  the  pro 
priety — of  the  Senate  to  pass  any  such  resolution;  for 
it  was  not  done  with  a  view  to  any  legislative  or  executive 
action  by  the  body,  and  it  condemned  the  President,  un 
heard,  for  a  matter  as  to  which  the  Senate  might  yet  be 
called  to  sit  as  his  judges  upon  an  impeachment.  Benton 
seems  to  have  appreciated,  even  while  the  resolution  was 
under  discussion,  that  here  was  an  opportunity  for  his 
side  to  rally  the  people  to  their  support  against  an  injustice 
and  wrong,  and  it  was  not  many  days  before  he  took 
steps  to  accomplish  this  end.  On  April  17,  1834,  Jackson 
replied  to  the  condemnatory  resolution  by  a  protest  which 
he  sent  to  the  Senate  and  which  it  was  at  once  moved  in 
that  body  should  not  be  received. 

It  was  during  the  debate  upon  this  motion  that  Ben- 
ton  first  gave  notice  of  his  intention  to  move  to  expunge 
the  resolution  condemning  the  President.  He  said  in 
his  speech  *  that  he  did  this  without  consultation  with 
any  human  being,  and  after  having  merely  announced  his 
intention  so  to  do  to  one  person ;  and  this  was  the  origin 
and  meaning  of  the  expression  of  which  he  was  so  fond, 
that  he  had  "  solitary  and  alone"  originated  this  action.  I 
know  of  no  direct  evidence  as  to  who  was  the  one  person 
to  whom  Benton  had  announced  his  intention  in  the  mat 
ter,  but  think  it  likely  that  Jackson  was  referred  to.  In 
this  speech,  Benton  said : 

"The  public  mind  was  now  to  be  occupied  with  a  question  of 
the  very  first  moment  and  importance,  and  identical  in  all  its  features 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  x.,  part  i,  1833-34,  pp.  1347-1352.    View,  i.,  pp.  428-430. 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  231 

with  the  great  question  growing  out  of  the  famous  resolutions  of 
the  English  House  of  Commons  in  the  case  of  the  Middlesex  election 
in  the  year  1768;  and  which  engrossed  the  attention  of  the  British 
empire  for  fourteen  years  before  it  was  settled.  That  question  was 
one  in  which  the  House  of  Commons  was  judged,  and  condemned, 
for  adopting  a  resolution  which  was  held  by  the  subjects  of  the 
British  crown  to  be  a  violation  of  their  constitution,  and  a  sub 
version  of  the  rights  of  Englishmen :  the  question  now  before  the 
Senate,  and  which  will  go  before  the  American  people,  grows  out  of 
a  resolution  in  which  he  (Mr.  B.)  believed  that  the  Constitution  had 
been  violated — the  privileges  of  the  House  of  Representatives  in 
vaded — and  the  rights  of  an  American  citizen,  in  the  person  of  the 
President,  subverted.  The  resolution  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
after  fourteen  years  of  annual  motions,  was  expunged  from  the 
journal  of  the  House;  and  he  pledged  himself  to  the  American 
people  to  commence  a  similar  series  of  motions  with  respect  to  this 
resolution  of  the  Senate.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  to  do  so  without 
consultation  with  any  human  being,  and  without  deigning  to  calcu 
late  the  chances  or  the  time  of  success.  He  rested  under  the  firm 
conviction  that  the  resolution  of  the  Senate,  which  had  drawn  from 
the  President  the  calm,  temperate,  and  dignified  protest,  which  had 
been  read  at  the  table,  was  a  resolution  which  ought  to  be  expunged 
from  the  journal  of  the  Senate;  and  if  anything  was  necessary  to 
stimulate  his  sense  of  duty  in  making  a  motion  to  that  effect,  and  in 
encouraging  others  after  he  was  gone,  in  following  up  that  motion 
to  success,  it  would  be  found  in  the  history  and  termination  of  the 
similar  motion  which  was  made  in  the  English  House  of  Commons 
to  which  he  had  referred.  That  motion  was  renewed  for  fourteen 
years — from  1768  to  1782 — before  it  was  successful.  For  the  first 
seven  years  the  lofty  and  indignant  majority  did  not  condescend  to 
reply  to  the  motion.  They  sunk  it  under  a  dead  vote  as  often  as 
presented.  The  second  seven  years  they  replied ;  and  at  the  end  of 
the  term,  and  on  the  assembling  of  a  new  Parliament,  the  veteran 
motion  was  carried  by  more  than  two  to  one;  and  the  gratifying 
spectacle  was  beheld  of  a  public  expurgation,  in  the  face  of  the 
assembled  Commons  of  England,  of  the  obnoxious  resolution  from 
the  journal  of  the  House.  .  .  . 

"  Mr.  B.  said  there  were  three  characters  in  which  the  Senate 
could  act ;  and  every  time  it  acted  it  necessarily  did  so  in  one  or  the 
other  of  these  characters.  It  possessed  executive,  legislative,  and 
judicial  characters.  As  a  part  of  the  executive,  it  acted  on  treaties 
and  nominations  to  office ;  as  a  part  of  the  legislative,  it  assisted  in 
making  laws;  as  a  judicial  tribunal,  it  decided  impeachments.  Now, 


232       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

in  which  of  these  characters  did  the  Senate  act  when  it  adopted  the 
resolution  in  question?  Not  in  its  executive  character,  it  will  be 
admitted ;  not  in  its  legislative  character,  it  will  be  proved :  for  the 
resolution  was,  in  its  nature,  wholly  foreign  to  legislation.  It  was 
directed,  not  to  the  formation  of  a  law,  but  to  the  condemnation  of 
the  President.  It  was  to  condemn  him  for  dismissing  one  Secretary 
because  he  would  not  do  a  thing,  and  appointing  another  that  he 
might  do  it ;  and  certainly  this  was  not  matter  for  legislation ;  for 
Mr.  Duane  could  not  be  restored  by  law,  nor  Mr.  Taney  be  put  out 
by  law.  It  was  to  convict  the  President  of  violating  the  constitution 
and  the  laws;  and  surely  these  infractions  are  not  to  be  amended 
by  laws,  but  avenged  by  trial  and  punishment.  The  very  nature  of 
the  resolution  proves  it  to  be  foreign  to  all  legislation;  its  form 
proves  the  same  thing;  for  it  is  not  joint,  to  require  the  action  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  and  thus  ripen  into  law ;  nor  is  it 
followed  by  an  instruction  to  a  committee  to  report  a  bill  in  con 
formity  to  it.  No  such  instruction  could  even  now  be  added  without 
committing  an  absurdity  of  the  most  ridiculous  character.  There 
was  another  resolution,  with  which  this  must  not  be  confounded, 
and  upon  which  an  instruction  to  a  committee  might  have  been 
bottomed ;  it  was  the  resolution  which  declared  the  Secretary's  rea 
sons  for  removing  the  deposits  to  be  insufficient  and  unsatisfactory ; 
but  no  such  instruction  has  been  bottomed  even  upon  that  resolu 
tion  ;  so  that  it  is  evident  that  no  legislation  of  any  kind  was  in 
tended  to  follow  either  resolution,  even  that  to  which  legislation 
might  have  been  appropriate,  much  less  that  to  which  it  would  have 
been  an  absurdity.  Four  months  have  elapsed  since  the  resolutions 
were  brought  in.  In  all  that  time  there  has  been  no  attempt  to  found 
a  legislative  act  upon  either  of  them;  and  it  is  too  late  now  to 
assume  that  the  one  which,  in  its  nature  and  in  its  form,  is  wholly 
foreign  to  legislation,  is  a  legislative  act,  and  adopted  by  the  Senate 
in  its  legislative  character.  No!  This  resolution  is  judicial;  it  is 
a  judgment  pronounced  upon  an  imputed  offence;  it  is  the  declared 
sense  of  a  majority  of  the  Senate,  of  the  guilt  of  the  President  of 
a  high  crime  and  misdemeanor.  It  is,  in  substance,  an  impeachment 
— an  impeachment  in  violation  of  all  the  forms  prescribed  by  the 
constitution — in  violation  of  the  privileges  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives — in  subversion  of  the  rights  of  the  accused,  and  the  record 
of  which  ought  to  be  expunged  from  the  journal  of  the  Senate." 

The  motion  to  expunge  was  made  light  of  and  treated 
almost  with  scorn  by  the  opposition  and  found  but  little 
support  even  among  the  President's  friends.  But  Benton 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  233 

seems  to  have  had  the  most  supreme  confidence  of  final 
triumph.  He  appreciated  the  enormous  personal  popu 
larity  of  Jackson  in  a  way  that  few  even  of  the  President's 
intimates  did,  while  the  whole  opposition  were  as  hope 
lessly  ignorant  of  the  impression  this  matter  would  make 
on  popular  feeling  as  they  were  at  every  stage  of  the  bank 
contest. 

At  first  Benton  merely  gave  notice  of  his  intention,  and 
on  the  last  day  of  the  session  submitted  a  motion  upon  the 
subject,  but  at  the  next  session  ( 1834-35)  he  introduced  a 
formal  resolution  which  recited  at  length  the  condemna 
tion  of  the  President  and  concluded  that  the  same  be  and 
"  hereby  is  ordered  to  be  expunged  from  the  journals  of 
the  Senate ;  because  the  said  resolution  is  illegal  and  un 
just,  of  evil  example,  indefinite  and  vague,  expressing  a 
criminal  charge  without  specification ;  and  was  irregularly 
and  unconstitutionally  adopted  by  the  Senate  in  subver 
sion  of  the  rights  of  defence  which  belong  to  an  accused 
and  impeachable  officer ;  and  at  a  time  and  under  circum 
stances  to  endanger  the  political  rights,  and  to  injure  the 
pecuniary  interests  of  the  people  of  the  United  States." 

By  this  time  several  legislatures  had  instructed  their 
State's  Senators  to  vote  for  the  intended  motion  to  ex 
punge,  and  Benton  now  made  his  leading  speech  in 
favor  of  the  measure,  believing  this,  as  he  says,  to  be  the 
proper  time  to  do  so,  "  in  order  to  produce  its  effects  on 
the  elections  of  the  ensuing  summer."  This  speech  nec 
essarily  covered  a  wide  ground  and  is  too  long  to  be 
reproduced  here,  but  he  cited  several  historical  instances 
(which  will  be  referred  to  later)  where  obnoxious  portions 
of  the  journals  of  legislative  bodies  had  been  expunged, 
and  the  following  extract  will  show  how  he  strained  to 
meet  some  of  the  objections  made  to  his  proposal : 

"  He  had  very  anxiously  considered  during  that  period  [while 
the  resolution  to  be  expunged  was  under  consideration]  all  the 
difficulties  and  all  the  proprieties  of  the  step  which  he  meditated. 


234       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

Was  the  intended  motion  to  clear  the  journal  of  the  resolution  right 
in  itself?  The  convictions  of  his  judgment  told  him  that  it  was. 
Was  expurgation  the  proper  mode  ?  Yes ;  he  was  thoroughly  satis 
fied  that  that  was  the  proper  mode  of  proceeding  in  this  case.  For 
the  criminating  resolution  which  he  wished  to  get  rid  of  combined 
all  the  characteristics  of  a  case  which  required  erasure,  obliteration, 
blotting  out;  for  it  was  a  case,  as  he  believed,  of  the  exercise  of 
power  without'  authority,  without  even  jurisdiction;  illegal,  irregu 
lar,  and  unjust.  Other  modes  of  annulling  the  resolution,  as  rescind 
ing,  reversing,  repealing,  could  not  be  proper  in  such  a  case;  for 
they  would  imply  rightful  jurisdiction,  a  lawful  authority,  a  legal 
action,  though  an  erroneous  judgment.  All  that  he  denied.  He 
denied  the  authority  of  the  Senate  to  pass  such  a  resolution  at  all ; 
and  he  affirmed  that  it  was  unjust,  and  contrary  to  the  truth,  as  well 
as  contrary  to  law.  This  being  his  view  of  the  resolution,  he  held 
that  the  true  and  proper  course,  the  parliamentary  course  of  pro 
ceeding  in  such  a  case,  was  to  expunge  it. 

''But,  said  Mr.  B.,  it  is  objected  that  the  Senate  has  no  right 
to  expunge  any  thing  from  its  journal;  that  it  is  required  by  the 
Constitution  to  keep  a  journal ;  and,  being  so  required,  could  not 
destroy  any  part  of  it.  This,  said  Mr.  B.,  is  sticking  in  the  bark, 
and  in  the  thinnest  bark  in  which  a  shot,  even  the  smallest,  was  ever 
lodged.  Various  are  the  meanings  of  the  word  keep,  used  as  a  verb. 
To  keep  a  journal  is  to  write  down,  daily,  the  history  of  what  you 
do.  For  the  Senate  to  keep  a  journal  is  to  cause  to  be  written  down, 
every  day,  the  account  of  its  proceedings ;  and,  having  done  that, 
the  constitutional  injunction  is  satisfied.  The  constitution  was  satis 
fied  by  entering  this  criminating  resolution  on  the  journal;  it  will  be 
equally  satisfied  by  entering  the  expunging  resolution  on  the  same 
journal.  In  each  case  the  Senate  keeps  a  journal  of  its  proceedings. 

"  It  is  objected,  also,  that  we  have  no  right  to  destroy  a  part  of 
the  journal;  and  that  to  expunge  is  to  destroy  and  to  prevent  the 
expunged  part  from  being  known  in  future.  Not  so  the  fact,  said 
Mr.  B.  The  matter  expunged  is  not  destroyed.  It  is  incorporated 
in  the  expunging  resolution,  and  lives  as  long  as  that  lives ;  the 
only  effect  of  the  expurgation  being  to  express,  in  the  most  emphatic 
manner,  the  opinion  that  such  matter  ought  never  to  have  been  put 
in  the  journal."  * 

After  this  speech  the  resolution  was  laid  upon  the 
table,  and  there  Benton  intended  it  should  stay,  as  there 

*  C.  G.,  vol.  xi.,  part  i,  1834-35,  pp.  631,  632. 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  235 

was,  of  course,  no  hope  of  making  any  impression  on  the 
then  Senate,  which  consisted  of  the  same  members  who 
had  passed  the  original  resolution  of  censure.  But  the 
opposition  took  pleasure  in  forcing  the  measure  to  a  vote 
on  more  than  one  occasion  against  his  wishes  for  the 
purpose  of  exhibiting  their  power  to  defeat  it,  and  on  the 
last  day  of  this  session  of  1834-35  it  was  called  up  and 
Benton  found  himself  so  nearly  without  support  that  he 
weakened  for  a  moment  under  circumstances  in  which 
most  men  would  have  surrendered  unconditionally. 

The  main  difficulty  was  that  many  held  the  motion  to 
expunge  to  be  a  violation  of  the  constitutional  provision 
that  the  Senate  shall  "  keep  a  journal,"  and  now  White, 
of  Tennessee,  who  had  been  generally  a  supporter  of 
Jackson,  moved  on  this  ground  to  strike  out  that  word 
and  insert  "  rescind,  reverse,  and  make  null  and  void." 
Benton  says  that  many  of  his  friends  then  came  about  him 
importuning  him  to  give  up  the  obnoxious  word,  and  that 
finally,  seeing  himself  almost  deserted,  he  yielded  a  reluct 
ant  assent  and  "  voted  with  others  of  his  friends  to 
emasculate  his  own  motion." 

Webster  arose  at  once  and  exulted  in  the  amendment. 
The  word  in  particular  which  rendered  the  resolution 
offensive,  he  said,  had  been  given  up.  "  That  which  made 
this  resolution,  which  we  have  now  amended,  particularly 
offensive,  was  this :  it  proposed  to  expunge  our  journal. 
It  called  on  us  to  violate,  to  obliterate,  to  erase,  our  own 
records.  It  was  calculated  to  fix  a  particular  stigma,  a 
peculiar  mark  of  reproach  or  disgrace,  on  the  resolution  of 
March  last.  .  .  .  Now,  sir,  all  this,  most  happily,  is  com 
pletely  defeated  by  the  almost  unanimous  vote  of  the  Sen 
ate  which  has  just  been  taken.  The  Senate  has  declared, 
in  the  most  emphatic  manner,  that  its  journal  shall  not 
be  tampered  with.  I  rejoice  most  heartily,  sir,  in  this 
decisive  result.  The  attempt  to  induce  the  Senate  to  ex 
punge  its  journal  has  failed,  signally  and  effectually  failed. 


236       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

The  record  remains,  neither  blurred,  blotted,  nor  dis 
graced." 

The  amended  resolution  was  then  laid  upon  the  table 
by  a  vote  of  twenty-seven  to  twenty. 

"  The  exulting  speech  of  Mr.  Webster,"  concludes 
Ben  ton,  "  restored  me  to  my  courage — made  a  man  of  me 
again;  and  the  moment  the  vote  was  over,*  I  rose  and 
submitted  the  original  resolution  over  again,  with  the 
detested  word  in  it — to  stand  for  the  second  week  of  the 
next  session — with  the  peremptory  declaration  that  I 
would  never  yield  it  again  to  the  solicitations  of  friend 
Dr  foe." 

Benton  had  from  the  first  supposed  that  it  would  be 
years  before  the  resolution  to  expunge  would  be  carried, 
and  had  hardly  looked  for  success  until  after  the  retire 
ment  of  Jackson;  but  the  movement  grew  rapidly,  and 
before  the  end  of  Jackson's  second  term  a  majority  of  the 
States  had  either  by  resolution  or  by  replacing  their  Sena 
tors  or  by  formal  instructions  to  them  declared  in  favor 
of  expunging.  The  opposition  claimed  that  this  result 
was  only  reached  by  an  unsparing  use  of  federal  patron 
age,  but  they  did  not  appreciate  the  immense  underlying 
popularity  of  Jackson  nor  the  unquestionable  fact  that 
the  resolution  intended  to  be  expunged  was  an  act  of  in 
justice  to  that  popular  favorite  and  ought  never  to  have 
been  passed.  At  the  same  time  there  is  reason  to  suppose 
that  Jackson  was  much  interested  in  the  accomplishment 
Df  the  "  expurgation,"  and  it  may  safely  be  assumed  that 
his  lieutenants  throughout  the  country  did  not  neglect  to 
impress  upon  their  subordinates  the  importance  of  agi 
tating  the  question. 

The  resolution  was  introduced  by  Benton  four  sep 
arate  times  at  as  many  sessions  in  somewhat  different 

*  According  to  the  Congressional  Debates,  Benton's  new  motion 
was  not  made  until  the  evening  session  of  the  same  day. 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  237 

forms,  but  at  length,  in  the  session  of  1836-37,  the  last  of 
Jackson's  second  term,  a  majority  was  known  to  be  in 
favor  of  expunging,  and  Benton  introduced  it  for  the  last 
time,  choosing  for  the  purpose  the  26th  of  December, 
which  was  the  third  anniversary  of  the  day  on  which  Clay 
had  first  moved  the  censure.  The  form  of  the  resolution 
was  changed,  and  it  now  recited  at  length  the  proceedings 
leading  up  to  the  final  vote. 

On  Saturday,  the  I4th  of  January,  1837,  the  Demo 
cratic  Senators  held  a  meeting  at  the  then  famous  restau 
rant  of  Boulanger,  to  agree  upon  the  final  steps,  and  were 
in  session  until  midnight.  Much  had  to  be  conceded  by 
different  persons,  and  Benton  writes  that  there  was  in 
particular  much  discussion  as  to  the  mode  of  expurga 
tion.  He  adds  that  actual  obliteration  was  the  mode  he 
wanted  to  adopt,  but  it  was  given  up  and  that  fixed  upon  * 
was  adopted  from  the  resolutions  of  the  General  Assem 
bly  of  Virginia;  he  agreed  to  this,  he  says,  upon  being 
allowed  "  to  compose  the  epitaph," — i.e.,  the  words  which 
were  to  be  written  across  the  face  of  the  obnoxious  resolu 
tion. 

The  members  of  the  caucus  then  agreed  that  the  meas 
ure  should  be  called  up  on  the  following  Monday,  and 
that  there  should  be  no  adjournment  until  it  was  passed. 
"  Expecting,"  Benton  goes  on,  "  a  protracted  session,  ex 
tending  through  the  day  and  night,  and  knowing  the 
difficulty  of  keeping  men  steady  to  their  work  and  in  good 
humor,  when  tired  and  hungry,  the  mover  of  the  proceed 
ings  took  care  to  provide,  as  far  as  possible,  against  such 

*  This  method  of  expunging  was  evidently  agreed  upon  at  the 
preceding  session,  for  it  was  contained  in  the  resolution  then  intro 
duced  by  Benton.  He  said  in  the  debate  that  he  had  agreed  to  this 
form  so  as  to  free  the  discussion  from  the  objection  that  a  physi 
cal  destruction  or  obliteration  of  the  record  would  be  a  violation 
of  the  constitutional  provision  (C  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  I,  1835-36,  pp. 
877-880). 


238       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

a  state  of  things;  and  gave  orders  that  night  to  have  an 
ample  supply  of  cold  hams,  turkeys,  rounds  of  beef,  pick 
les,  wines,  and  cups  of  hot  coffee,  ready  in  a  certain  com 
mittee-room  near  the  Senate  Chamber  by  four  o'clock  on 
the  afternoon  of  Monday." 

At  the  session  on  that  day  Benton  made  a  speech  *  in 
which  he  did  not  again  argue  the  subject  at  any  length,  but 
referred  to  the  many  evidences  of  popular  approval  of 
the  measure  now  before  them,  and  contended  that  these 
expressions  of  the  popular  will  were  binding  and  obliga 
tory.  He  gave  a  very  good  review  of  the  leading  events 
of  Jackson's  career,  who,  as  he  said,  was  in  a  little  more 
than  forty  days  to  step  down  from  the  position  of  vast 
power  which  he  had  long  occupied  and  to  cease  to  be  a 
public  character.  His  peroration  was  as  follows : 

"  And  now,  sir,  I  finish  the  task  which,  three  years  ago,  I  im 
posed  on  myself  Solitary  and  alone,  and  amidst  the  jeers  and  taunts 
of  my  opponents,  I  put  this  ball  in  motion.  The  people  have  taken 
it  up,  and  rolled  it  forward,  and  I  am  no  longer  any  thing  but  a 
unit  in  the  vast  mass  which  now  propels  it.  In  the  name  of  that 
mass  I  speak.  I  demand  the  execution  of  the  edict  of  the  people ; 
I  demand  the  expurgation  of  that  sentence  which  the  voice  of  a 
few  Senators,  and  the  power  of  their  confederate,  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  has  caused  to  be  placed  on  the  journal  of  the  Senate; 
and  which  the  voice  of  millions  of  freemen  has  ordered  to  be 
expunged  from  it." 

Not  many  speeches  were  delivered  on  the  affirmative 
side  of  the  question,  but  a  number  were  made  against  the 
resolution,  and  night  came  on  with  the  expungers  visibly 
determined  to  see  the  matter  through.  They  had  resorted 
to  the  committee-room  and  its  refreshments  in  parties  of 
a  few  at  a  time,  so  as  always  to  leave  enough  members  on 
watch,  and  had  even  extended  its  hospitalities  to  such  of 
their  opponents  as  could  sufficiently  maintain  their  good 
temper  to  be  willing  to  avail  themselves  of  the  invitation. 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xiii.,  part  i,  1836-37,  pp.  380-391. 


EXPUNGING    RESOLUTION  239 

Finally,  the  great  leaders, — Clay,  Calhoun,  and  Web 
ster, — feeling  (so  Benton  thinks)  that  the  inevitable  hour 
had  come  and  that  they  could  no  longer  afford  to  be  silent, 
made  those  speeches  against  the  resolution  which  have 
been  so  often  quoted ;  and  near  midnight  two  opposition 
Senators  came  to  Benton,  while  Webster  was  speaking, 
and  announced  that,  as  there  was  no  doubt  of  the  final 
result  and  the  contest  had  become  one  merely  of  physical 
endurance,  their  side  would  say  no  more.  When  Webster 
closed,  "  there  was  a  pause,  a  dead  silence,  and  an  intense 
feeling,"  and  then  came  calls  for  the  question,  and  the 
resolution  was  carried  by  twenty-four  votes  to  nineteen. 
Benton  then  moved  that  the  resolution  be  forthwith  exe 
cuted,  whereupon  the  original  manuscript  journal  of  the 
Senate  was  brought  in,  opened  at  the  page  containing  the 
resolution  of  censure,  and  the  secretary  of  the  Senate  pro 
ceeded,  in  pursuance  of  the  terms  of  the  resolution  just 
passed,  to  draw7  broad  black  lines  around  the  portion  in 
question,  and  to  write  across  its  face  in  strong  letters  the 
words  "  Expunged  by  order  of  the  Senate  this  i6th  day  of 
January,  1837." 

All  this  time  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  as  well  as  the 
galleries  and  lobbies,  was  filled  with  a  mass  of  onlookers 
hardly  able  to  budge.  Similar  crowrds  had  gathered  on 
several  other  occasions  during  the  progress  of  the  contest 
with  the  bank,  nor  had  they  hesitated  at  times  to  express 
their  feelings  in  minor  disturbances,  but  during  the  pro 
ceedings  in  regard  to  expunging  their  conduct  wras  such 
that  some  of  Benton's  friends  sent  out  for  arms  and  gath 
ered  about  him,  feeling  that  he  was  sure  to  be  the  storm- 
centre  of  any  disturbance  that  might  occur.  They  even 
procured  arms  for  him,  too,  and  urged  him  to  carry  them, 
but  he  refused.  It  has  been  said  *  that  he  expected  to  be 

*  By  Senator  Vest  in  his  speech  in  Benton  Statue  Proceedings, 
p.  85.  The  fact  of  Benton's  friends  procuring  arms  for  him  and  his 


240       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

assassinated  on  this  occasion,  and  it  is  quite  evident  that 
some  hostile  manifestation  had  been  anticipated.  Mrs. 
Benton  was  present,  preferring  to  be  near  her  husband  at 
this  anxious  culminating  moment  of  a  long  contest. 

In  the  closing  speech  Webster  had  made  an  unfor 
tunate  reference  to  his  ignorance  of  the  feelings  with 
which  the  hundreds  of  citizens  present  would  regard  the 
"  ruthless  violation  of  a  sacred  instrument"  about  to  be 
exhibited ;  and  hardly  had  the  secretary  begun  the  process 
of  expunging  when  "  a  storm  of  hisses,  groans,  and 
vociferations  arose  from  the  left  wing  of  the  circular  gal 
lery,  over  the  head  of  Senator  Benton."  The  galleries 
were  ordered  to  be  cleared  in  accordance  with  the  rules, 
but  Benton  at  once  said : 

"  I  hope  the  galleries  will  not  be  cleared,  as  many  innocent  per 
sons  will  be  excluded,  who  have  been  guilty  of  no  violation  of  order. 
Let  the  ruffians  who  have  made  the  disturbance  alone  be  punished; 
let  them  be  apprehended.  I  hope  the  sergeant-at-arms  will  be 
directed  to  enter  the  gallery,  and  seize  the  ruffians,  ascertaining  who 
they  are  in  the  best  way  he  can.  Let  him  apprehend  them  and  bring 
them  to  the  bar  of  the  Senate.  Let  him  seize  the  bank  ruffians.  I 
hope  that  they  will  not  now  be  suffered  to  insult  the  Senate,  as  they 
did  when  it  was  under  the  power  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States, 
when  ruffians,  with  arms  upon  them,  insulted  us  with  impunity.  Let 
them  be  taken  and  brought  to  the  bar  of  the  Senate.  Here  is  one 
just  above  me  that  may  easily  be  identified — the  bank  ruffians." 

In  accordance  with  this  suggestion  Benton  says  that 
the  ringleader  was  arrested  and  brought  to  the  bar,  where 
upon  the  rest  were  intimidated  and  the  expunging  process 
went  on  in  silence.  Jackson  was  immensely  gratified  at 
this  triumph,  and  gave  a  grand  dinner  to  the  "  expungers" 
and  their  wives;  but,  being  too  weak  to  sit  at  the  table, 
he  confined  himself  to  meeting  the  company  and  placed 
Benton,  as  the  "  head-expunger,"  in  his  chair,  while  he 

refusal  to  carry  them  was  testified  to  by  Senator  Jones  before  the 
committee  of  investigation  of  the  Foote-Benton  quarrel  (3ist  Cong., 
ist  Sess.,  Senate  Committee  Reports,  No.  170,  p.  19). 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  241 

himself  withdrew  to  his  sick-chamber.  Benton  closes  his 
account  of  the  matter  with  the  remark,  "  That  expurga 
tion  !  it  was  the  '  crowning  mercy'  of  his  civil — as  New 
Orleans  had  been  of  his  military — life."  * 

A  vast  personal  and  political  triumph  it  was  beyond 
doubt  for  the  President,  who  was  so  soon  to  retire  to 
private  life.  In  one  sense  it  may  be  said  to  have  been  a 
struggle  for  years  over  a  few  words  of  no  import  in 
action,  but  it  had  an  immense  influence  on  popular  feeling 
and  belief,  and  served  to  demonstrate  that  public  opinion 
had  at  last  decided  that  the  President  had  been  greatly 
wronged  when  the  adverse  leaders  of  the  Senate,  in  the 
heyday  of  their  power,  had  without  trial  or  hearing  found 
him  guilty  of  an  impeachable  offence. 

That  the  resolution  of  censure  ought  never  to  have 
been  passed  seems  very  sure,  and  the  acts  which  were  in 
reality  referred  to  by  the  vague  resolution  are  now  very 
often  admitted,  even  by  opponents,  to  have  been  within  the 
President's  power.  But  even  conceding  that  they  were 
not,  the  reasons  against  the  Senate's  passing  such  a  con 
demnation  were  very  strong,  as  has  been  sufficiently  inti 
mated  already.  This  was  always  the  opinion  of  John 
Quincy  Adams,  and  he  had  so  stated  "  with  much  earnest 
ness"  to  at  least  two  Senators  who  had  consulted  him  at 
the  time  when  the  censure  was  under  discussion. 

During  his  own  presidency  a  resolution  had  been  in 
troduced  into  the  Senate  reciting  that  he  claimed  a  right 
to  appoint  ministers  to  the  Panama  Congress  without  the 
advice  of  the  Senate,  and  protesting  against  the  claim. 


*  In  my  account  of  the  expunging  resolution  I  have,  as  to  Ben- 
ton's  motives,  largely  followed  his  account  in  the  View,  i.,  pp.  428- 
432,  525,  528-550,  717-731.  See  also  C.  D.,  vol.  x.,  part  i,  1833-34,  pp. 
1347,  etc.;  vol.  xi.,  part  i,  1834-35,  PP-  253,  etc.,  510,  etc.,  631,  etc., 
723,  etc.;  vol.  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  p.  877,  etc.;  vol.  xiii.,  part  i, 
1836-37,  PP-  128,  380,  etc.,  428-506. 


242       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

But  that  protest  is  very  much  easier  to  defend  than  is  the 
censure  of  Jackson  in  1834;  for,  though  Adams  had  in 
his  message  at  the  opening  of  the  session  stated  that 
"ministers  will  be  commissioned  to  attend"  at  the  de 
liberations  at  Panama,  yet  he  sent  the  nominations  on 
December  26  to  the  Senate,  and  said  that,  "  although  this 
measure  was  deemed  to  be  within  the  constitutional  com 
petency  of  the  Executive,  I  have  not  thought  proper  to 
take  any  step  in  it  before  ascertaining  that  my  opinion 
of  its  expediency  will  concur  with  that  of  both  branches  of 
the  legislature :  first,  by  the  decision  of  the  Senate  upon 
the  nominations  to  be  laid  before  them;  and,  secondly, 
by  the  sanction  of  both  Houses  to  the  appropriations, 
without  which  it  cannot  be  carried  into  effect." 

He  had  therefore  committed  no  act  for  which  he  could 
possibly  have  been  impeached ;  he  had  merely  claimed  a 
certain  abstract  right,  and  as  to  the  matter  in  hand  had  sub 
mitted  himself  to  Congress  and  almost  asked  its  opinion. 
Yet  he  was  very  clear  that  the  Senate  had  no  right,  even  in 
that  case,  to  pass  the  resolution,  and  was  highly  indignant 
that  it  should  so  undertake  to  make  itself  "  a  secret  tri 
bunal  or  inquisition  of  state,  in  which  they  constitute  them 
selves  accusers,  triers,  judges,  and  executioners  against 
the  President  of  the  United  States  upon  impeachable  mat 
ters,  without  hearing  him,  without  even  informing  him 
that  they  are  receiving  charges  against  him."  * 

The  gist  of  the  whole  expunging  movement  lay  in  the 


*  Diary,  vii.,  p.  100.  Benton  had  voted  against  laying  these 
resolutions  on  the  table,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  expressed  any 
final  opinion  on  them.  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.  (1825-26),  p.  642.  Branch's 
resolution,  as  amended,  is  to  be  found  at  pp.  404,  405.  It  protested 
against  the  claims  of  power  so  as  to  prevent  the  growth  of  a  prece 
dent.  Adams  wrote  (Diary,  vii.,  p.  99)  that  Branch  "  states  me  to 
have  asserted  what  I  do  not  assert."  See  Diary,  ix.,  p.  116,  for 
Adams's  opinion  as  to  the  resolution  against  Jackson. 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  243 

desire  to  put  a  special  stigma  upon  the  censure  of  Jackson, 
and  this  was  what  caused  its  sting.  The  leaders  who  had 
fathered  the  resolution  did  not  like  to  see  their  handiwork 
thus  held  up  to  scorn  and  condemnation,  while  such  was 
the  very  purpose  the  expungers  had  in  view.  Hence 
flowed  all  the  tears  in  the  matter. 

It  was  distinctly  shown  in  the  debates  that  expunging 
was  the  method  which  had  been  adopted  in  other  impor 
tant  instances  in  party  warfare  to  mark  with  opprobrium 
or  even  to  blot  out  of  existence  some  specially  detested 
measure  which  had  been  adopted  in  heated  party  contests. 
Thus,  in  the  famous  case  of  Wilkes  he  had  for  many  years 
made  motions  to  expunge  from  the  journal  of  the  House 
of  Commons  a  certain  resolution  in  regard  to  himself,  and 
had  finally  succeeded  with  the  concurrence  of  a  very  large 
majority. 

In  a  case  in  Jefferson's  time  the  Senate  had  by  formal 
resolution  "  expunged"  and  absolutely  excluded  from  its 
journal  a  statement  that  certain  filibusters  thought  they  had 
Executive  sanction  which  had  been  intended,  of  course, 
to  reflect  on  the  President.  This  was,  it  is  true,  done  on 
the  same  day  on  which  the  memorial  containing  the  state 
ment  was  presented,  but  after  the  actual  fact  of  presenta 
tion  ;  and  no  trace  whatsoever  of  it  remained  even  in  the 
manuscript  copy  of  the  journal.  Benton's  industry  un 
earthed  at  length  from  the  garret  of  the  Capitol  the  dusty 
unbound  sheets  which  the  clerk  had  kept  during  the  ses 
sion  in  question  and  with  the  aid  of  which  he  had  later 
made  up  the  fair  copy,  and  only  in  these  old  dusty  papers 
was  to  be  found  the  true  record  of  that  day's  events,  while 
not  a  word  of  the  matter  expunged  or  of  the  resolution 
to  expunge  was  to  be  found  either  in  the  manuscript 
journal  proper  or  in  the  printed  copies  thereof.  And,  in 
Massachusetts,  Quincy's  resolution  against  rejoicing  in 
the  naval  victories  of  the  War  of  1812  had  been  a  few 
years  later  formally  directed  by  resolution  to  be  "ex- 


244       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

punged  from  the  journals  of  the  Senate."  Other  prece 
dents  also  exist  in  our  States.* 

Some  of  the  cases  that  were  cited  are  probably  dis 
tinguished  by  the  special  provision  as  to  keeping  a  journal 
contained  in  the  federal  Constitution,  but  Benton  stated 
that  in  others  there  was  precisely  the  same  provision  as 
that  relating  to  the  United  States  Senate,  and  it  cannot 
be  doubted  that  some  of  the  precedents  went  vastly  further 
than  Benton's  resolution  in  its  final  shape.  In  his  pro 
posals,  moreover,  the  matter  to  be  expunged  was  generally 
or  always  recited  verbatim  in  the  resolution  to  expunge, 
and  thus  preserved  in  perpetuity. 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  there  can  be  any  constitutional 
objection  to  what  was  actually  done  in  the  case,  for  the 
Senate  journal  of  March  28,  1834,  exists  to-day  and  has 
been  "  kept."  To  draw  lines  around  it  and  to  write  cer 
tain  words  across  its  face,  as  was  done,  has  not  at  all 
destroyed  it,  and  that  day's  original  journal  can  be  read 
now  as  well  as  before :  f  but  there  would  in  the  writer's 
opinion  have  been  at  least  a  technical  failure  to  "  keep  a 
journal,"  if  Benton's  early  wish  for  actual  obliteration 

*  According  to  John  Quincy  Adams  (Diary,  i.,  pp.  439,  440), 
who  was  a  member  of  the  Senate  at  the  time  of  the  expunging  in 
Jefferson's  time  (1806),  the  clerk  had  not  altogether  followed  the 
directions  of  the  Senate  and  its  presiding  officer  in  the  matter.  The 
intention  seems  to  have  been  that  the  resolution  to  expunge  should 
appear  in  the  journal,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  matter 
ordered  to  be  expunged  was  intended  to  be  entirely  excluded.  The 
precedents  are  reviewed  by  Benton  in  C.  D.,  vol.  xi.,  part  I,  1834-35, 
PP-  32-35.  Ibid.,  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  pp.  887-891,  and  see  pp.  946- 
948.  See  also  speeches  of  Rives  and  of  Leigh,  of  Virginia  (C.  D., 
vol.  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  pp.  981,  etc.,  1058,  etc.;  Niles's  Register, 
vol.  1.,  pp.  168,  173).  Rives  quotes  several  cases  not  mentioned  by 
Benton,  while  Leigh  argues  against  them  all. 

t  Schouler  (History  of  United  States,  iv.,  p.  239)  writes  that 
"the  record  of  censure  is  to  be  read  on  the  book  under  the  black, 
almost  as  plain  to-day  as  it  ever  was." 


EXPUNGING   RESOLUTION  245 

had  been  carried  out ;  for,  although  the  obnoxious  matter 
would  have  been  contained  in  full  in  the  resolution  to 
expunge,  and  thus  the  doings  of  the  Senate  on  that  par 
ticular  day  would  have  been  actually  preserved  in  the 
Senate  records,  yet  it  would  not  have  been  in  the  place 
where  it  ought  to  be  and  where  the  Constitution  has  di 
rected  that  it  shall  be  kept. 

It  is  not  without  instruction  to  note  that  in  the  ups 
and  downs  of  political  life  the  Whigs  came  near  to  having 
their  day  upon  the  matter  of  purifying  the  Senate's  rec 
ords.  When  they  came  into  power  in  1841,  Bayard,  of 
Delaware,  under  instructions  from  his  State  Legislature, 
introduced  in  turn  a  resolution  to  expunge  Benton's  ex 
purgation  and  to  restore  the  journal  to  its  pristine  purity. 
Benton,  of  course,  met  this  at  once  with  opposition;  but 
Bayard,  though  he  presented  his  resolution  at  two  ses 
sions,*  on  both  occasions  asked  to  have  it  lie  over  until  the 
next  session  and  then  did  not  call  it  up.  Doubtless  the 
Whigs  felt  that  the  physical  difficulty  of  restoring  the 
journal  was  insuperable;  but,  besides  this,  they  found 
themselves  too  disorganized  and  too  disappointed  in  their 
once  high  hopes  to  venture  upon  taking  up  another  fight 
on  a  side  issue. 

*  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  452.  Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
P-  977- 


CHAPTER     XV 

NULLIFICATION THE  TARIFF THE   SPECIE   CIRCULAR—^ 

EXECUTIVE     PATRONAGE THE    BANKING     AND     CUR 
RENCY  SYSTEMS THE  CHANGE  OF  RATIO  OF  GOLD  AND 

SILVER THE  SUB-TREASURY TYLER  AND  THE  WHIG 

MEASURES  OF  184! THE  PANIC  OF  1837 

DURING  the  days  of  the  bank  struggle  other  matters 
of  immense  importance  to  the  American  people  were  also 
under  discussion,  and  it  is  one  of  the  many  proofs  of  the 
power  and  capacity  of  Jackson  that  he  was  able  to  guide 
the  ship  of  state  in  safety  through  the  hosts  of  perils  that 
loomed  up  on  all  sides  at  that  period.  In  one  sense  none 
was  more  dangerous  than  nullification. 

State  rights  in  general  was  nothing  new,  nor  was  the 
threat  of  actual  State  resistance  to  federal  laws,  for  such 
had  been  heard  before  at  different  times  in  several  parts 
of  the  country.  But  the  idea  was  worked  out  in  great 
perfection  in  1832-33,  and  was  on  the  very  verge  of 
actual  application  under  formally  passed  State  laws,  so 
that  an  armed  conflict  was  narrowly  averted  at  a  time 
when  any  student  will  know  that  the  relative  power  of  the 
federal  government  had  by  no  means  grown  to  that  de 
gree  which  enabled  it  thirty  years  later  to  meet  and  destroy 
a  still  more  formidable  opposition. 

It  is  not  at  all  clear  to  what  extent  the  popular  feeling 
in  the  North  would  at  that  time  have  supported  a  civil 
war  waged  for  the  purpose  of  crushing  the  resistance  to 
the  tariff  laws  in  South  Carolina.  The  idea  of  nation 
ality  had  undoubtedly  received  an  enormous  impetus 
through  the  famous  debate  of  Webster  and  Hayne,  but 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES   OF   THE   DAY    247 

it  is  impossible  to  know  to  what  extent  this  had  grown 
by  1833. 

It  has  been  seen  that  Benton  took  an  important  part 
in  that  debate,  speaking  always  on  the  same  side  as  the 
South  and  chiefly  against  Webster,  but  his  speeches  had 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  of  the  constitu 
tional  rights  of  a  State.  His  feelings  up  to  that  time 
and  later  were  almost  entirely  with  the  South,  and  in 
the  matter  actually  involved  in  the  resolution  under  dis 
cussion  the  South  and  West  were  united,  so  that  he 
naturally  opposed  the  New  England  view  upon  the  main 
question.  And  he  expressly  writes  that  at  the  time  the 
doctrine  of  nullification  "  did  not  at  all  strike  me  as  going 
the  length  which  it  afterwards  avowed;  nor  have  I  ever 
believed  that  Mr.  Hayne  contemplated  disunion,  in  any 
contingency,  as  one  of  its  results." 

His  understanding  was  that  Hayne  had  in  view  the 
same  remedy  which  Benton  contends  the  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798  and  1799  contemplated,— 
the  initiation  of  "  a  State  movement  by  two-thirds  of  the 
States  (the  number  required  by  the  fifth  article  of  the 
federal  Constitution),  to  amend,  or  authoritatively  ex 
pound  the  Constitution."  But  it  was  not  long  before  he 
learned  his  error  in  this  respect. 

It  is  more  than  likely  that  conversation  with  Southern 
men  began  soon  to  open  his  eyes,  and  it  is  evident  that 
the  famous  Jefferson  Birthday  Dinner  on  April  13,  1830, 
helped  to  disabuse  him.  He  was  of  course  a  subscriber 
to  the  dinner,  and  found,  upon  his  arrival  a  little  late, 
that  those  present  were  gathering  in  clusters  and  talking 
with  animation  about  something  serious.  He  soon  dis 
covered  that  the  conversation  related  to  the  regular  toasts, 
and  that  many  objected  to  the  strong  dose  of  nullification 
contained  in  them,  while  some  even  went  away,  declining 
to  be  connected  with  the  effort  thus  to  make  Jefferson 
the  father  of  the  doctrine. 


248       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

The  famous  volunteer  toast  given  by  Jackson  later  in 
the  evening — "  Our  Federal  Union :  It  must  be  pre 
served" — was,  Benton  writes,  "  received  by  the  public  as 
a  proclamation  from  the  President,  to  announce  a  plot 
against  the  Union,  and  to  summon  the  people  to  its  de 
fence."  Calhoun's  toast — "  The  Union :  next  to  our  Lib 
erty  the  most  dear :  may  we  all  remember  that  it  can  only 
be  preserved  by  respecting  the  rights  of  the  States,  and 
distributing  equally  the  benefit  and  burthen  of  the  Union" 
— served  to  emphasize  the  other  view,  and  in  Benton's 
opinion  the  phrases  contained  in  it  "  connecting  themselves 
with  Mr.  Hayne's  speech,  and  with  proceedings  and  pub 
lications  in  South  Carolina,  unveiled  Nullification  as  a 
new  and  distinct  doctrine  in  the  United  States,  with  Mr. 
Calhoun  for  its  apostle,  and  a  new  party  in  the  field  of 
which  he  was  the  leader.  The  proceedings  of  the  day  put 
an  end  to  all  doubt  about  the  justice  of  Mr.  Webster's 
grand  peroration  [in  his  speech  in  the  debate  with 
Hayne],  and  revealed  to  the  public  mind  the  fact  of  an 
actual  design  to  dissolve  the  Union."  * 

I  have  not  found  that  Benton  took  any  part  in  the 
actual  developments  of  the  struggle  over  nullification,  and, 
so  far  as  the  Congressional  Debates  and  the  "  Thirty 
Years'  View"  show,  he  neither  spoke  nor  voted  on  the 
Force  Bill.  The  reasons  for  this  are  not  clear,  unless  he 
found  it  embarrassing  to  come  out  in  opposition  to  the 
side  with  which  he  had  acted  in  the  recent  Hayne- Webster 
debate.  But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  actual  motives 
for  his  course  at  the  time,  he  came  in  later  years  to  regard 
the  struggle  as  one  of  vast  moment  to  our  very  existence, 
and  in  more  than  one  instance  expresses  the  greatest  ad- 

*  View,  i.,  p.  148,  and  see  ibid.,  pp.  46,  138,  141,  142.  See  also 
Abridgment  of  the  Debates  of  Congress,  vol.  x.,  p.  449,  foot-note, 
where,  however,  Benton  says  that  he  did  not  believe  in  the  existence 
of  a  design  of  forcible  resistance  to  the  tariff  laws  until  the  passage 
of  the  nullifying  ordinance  of  November,  1832. 


FINANCIAL   MEASURES    OF   THE   DAY    249 

miration  for  the  position  Webster  gained  at  the  time 
through  his  support  of  the  measures  which  were  carried 
out  by  a  President  of  the  opposite  party.  Probably  \Veb- 
ster  could  hardly  have  done  otherwise  after  his  debate  with 
Hayne,  but  Benton  says  *  truly ; 

"It  was  a  proud  era  in  his  life,  supporting  with  transcendent 
ability  the  cause  of  the  constitution  and  the  country,  in  the  person  of 
a  chief  magistrate  to  whom  he  was  politically  opposed,  bursting  the 
bonds  of  party  at  the  call  of  duty,  and  displaying  a  patriotism  worthy 
of  admiration  and  imitation.  General  Jackson  felt  the  debt  of 
gratitude  and  admiration  which  he  owed  him ;  the  country,  without 
distinction  of  party,  felt  the  same ;  and  the  universality  of  the  feel 
ing  was  one  of  the  grateful  instances  of  popular  applause  and  justice 
when  great  talents  are  seen  exerting  themselves  for  the  good  of  the 
country.  He  was  the  colossal  figure  on  the  political  stage  during 
that  time;  and  his  labors,  splendid  in  their  day,  survive  for  the 
benefit  of  distant  posterity." 

In  regard  to  the  other  leading  measure  by  which  the 
nullification  troubles  were  set  at  rest, — the  Compromise 
tariff  of  1833, — Benton  was  most  warmly  opposed  to  it, 
and  constantly  calls  it  "  a  compromise  between  two  poli 
ticians"  (Clay  and  Calhoun).  He  writes  in  the  "  View" 
that  his  opinion  at  the  time  was  that  the  troubles  were 
being  wisely  settled  by  the  government,  when  these  two 
politicians  took  the  subject  out  of  its  hands,  set  them 
selves  up  as  a  new  power  in  the  state,  and  regulated  the 
matter  by  their  private  agreement,  which  was  then  re 
lentlessly  driven  through  Congress  and  thus  given  the 
forms  of  law.  "  A  compromise  made  with  a  State  in 
arms,"  he  writes,  "  is  a  capitulation  to  that  State,"  and  he 
looked  upon  the  bill  as  having  been  of  very  evil  example 
by  remitting  our  government  to  the  state  of  the  old  con 
federation  of  acting  upon  sovereignties  instead  of  upon 
individuals. 

These  were,  he  intimates,  views  expressed  by  him  at 

•fir 

a.    t  r  •  T 1     •    1  •  •  HMfcl.JL.MXi   II  mi  I  V  P  ** 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  333,  334-     Ibid.,  n., 


250       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  time;  but,  so  far  as  the  "  Debates"  show,  his  opposi 
tion  to  the  bill  in  1833  was  based  chiefly  on  the  system 
of  home  valuation,  which  he  thought  would  indirectly 
tend  to  raise  the  duties,  and  especially  to  raise  them  on 
goods  imported  by  way  of  Southern  ports.  The  pro 
vision  to  regulate  the  rates  until  1842  was  also  either 
then  or  later  specially  obnoxious  to  him;  and  he  insists 
that  the  Congress  of  their  day  had  no  right  to  do  this, 
and  says  he  added  that  he  should  not  be  bound  by  its 
terms.  He  gives  what  he  thinks  was  the  secret  history 
of  the  measures  composing  the  compromise,  and  his  opin 
ion  is  that  Clay  had  much  less  actual  power  in  the  matter 
than  is  usually  supposed,  while  Calhoun  found  himself 
in  an  absolutely  impossible  position,  and  was  then  forced, 
much  against  his  will,  to  vote  for  provisions  which  he 
bitterly  detested,  as  the  only  means  allowed  him  of  es 
cape.  Benton  takes  some  pleasure,  too,  in  telling  how 
"  disturbed"  Calhoun  was  at  the  threats  of  arrest  said  to 
have  been  made  against  him  by  Jackson.* 

While  writing  of  the  tariff,  it  will  be  well  to  consider 
Benton's  course  and  general  beliefs  upon  that  subject. 
He  was  by  no  means  a  believer  in  the  doctrines  of  pro 
tection,  and  was  very  generally  to  be  found  on  the  side 
of  lower  duties.  But,  while  this  is  in  the  main  true  of 
him  from  the  start  of  his  career  to  its  end,  he  was  not 
one  of  those  theorists  who  pretend  that  they  will  never 
cast  a  vote  which  their  private  judgment  disapproves. 
He  had  too  much  knowledge  of  public  affairs  not  to  ap 
preciate  that  a  statesman,  in  order  to  hold  his  position 
and  be  long  of  use  to  his  constituents,  must  at  times  vote 
for  measures  he  does  not  believe  in,  and  consequently  did 
so  on  this  subject  as  well  as  doubtless  others.  But  on  the 
other  hand, — and  here  is  the  real  difference  between  him 
and  the  petty  self-thought  moralists,  who  want  forever 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  322-330,  342-344,  346. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    251 

to  stand  out  on  trifles, — his  long  career  contains  several 
instances  in  which,  his  mind  being  strongly  made  up  on 
a  matter  he  thought  essential,  he  flung  expediency  to 
the  winds  and  stood  alone  among  his  people,  magnificent 
in  his  loneliness. 

Writing  in  one  place  of  the  tariff,  he  says  that  he 
"often  had  to  lament  that  a  sense  of  duty  to  his  own 
constituents  required  him  to  give  votes  which  his  judg 
ment  disapproved  and  his  feelings  condemned."  And  ac 
cordingly,  when  the  tariff  was  amended  in  1828,  he 
moved  an  amendment  raising  the  duty  on  lead — an  article 
largely  mined  in  Missouri — about  one  hundred  per  cent., 
and  moved  also  higher  rates  on  furs,  molasses,  hemp, 
and  indigo.  The  last-named  article  was  a  production  of 
the  Southern  States,  but  the  members  from  that  section 
were  so  opposed  to  the  bill  that  they  were  unwilling  to 
move  the  increase.  Benton  made  the  motion  in  order 
that  the  "  '  American  system'  should  work  alike  in  all 
parts  of  our  America,"  but  the  proposal  wras  defeated,  as 
were  all  the  others  he  made. 

His  close  early  association  with  the  South  and  with 
Southern  men  doubtless  led  to  his  motion  to  raise  the 
duty  on  indigo,  and  probably  it  was  made  only  after  pre- 
arrangement  with  Southern  members.  He  thought  it 
very  wrong  that  the  motion  should  be  defeated  at  a  time 
when  the  rates  were  being  generally  raised,  and  was  of 
opinion  that  the  South  was  very  unjustly  treated  in  the 
matter  of  the  tariff.  He  voted  for  the  Act  of  1828  "  in 
obedience  to  the  will  of  his  constituents,"  but  thought  it 
marked  an  era  in  our  legislation.  Begun  on  behalf  of 
the  woollen  men,  its  advocates  soon  found  themselves 
compelled  to  secure  help  from  other  interests,  and  this 
could  only  be  done  by  admitting  them  to  the  benefits  of 
the  bill. 

The  result  was  a  log-rolling  measure  of  very  high 
rates,  which  g-ave  rise  in  Benton's  opinion  to  nullification 


252       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

and  to  the  heart-burning  between  the  North  and  the 
South.  And  in  one  instance  he  lamented  the  departure 
of  the  early  harmonious  days  of  a  moderate  tariff, 
"  when  the  word  tariff  was  never  pronounced,  and  when, 
in  respect  to  those  laws,  the  mass  of  our  population  was 
in  the  happy  condition  of  Moliere's  country  gentleman, 
who  had  talked  prose  all  his  life  without  knowing  it." 

With  the  bargains  made  at  times  to  give  exorbitant 
rates  to  some  particular  manufacture,  in  order  to  secure 
the  votes  necessary  to  pass  a  bill,  he  had  no  patience,  and 
would  gladly  expose  and  denounce  them,  and  he  showed 
also  a  strong  dislike  to  taxing  the  whole  country  for  the 
benefit  of  one  or  a  few  petty  mills.  Thus  in  1842  he 
tried  in  vain  to  defeat  a  proposed  tax  on  pins,  which 
were,  according  to  him,  made  only  by  two  small  factories 
in  the  country,  and  their  product  of  a  very  coarse  and 
inferior  quality.  Probably  this  provision  was  based  on 
some  log-rolling  bargain,  but  at  least  one  far  worse  case 
came  under  his  notice. 

While  the  Compromise  Tariff  of  1833,  which  was  in 
general  a  bill  to  lower  the  rates,  was  pending,  a  pro 
vision  was  found  in  it  materially  raising  the  duty  on  a 
coarse  cloth  known  as  "  Kendall  cotton."  This  was, 
Benton  says,  an  article  exclusively  for  the  laboring  pop 
ulation,  and  was  made  by  a  few  small  factories  in  Con 
necticut  and  some  other  New  England  States.  But, 
when  a  motion  was  made  to  strike  it  out,  it  was  stated 
to  be  "  an  essential  part  of  the  compromise/'  and  one 
member  from  New  England  said  openly  that  "  the  pas 
sage  of  the  bill  depended  upon  it.  If  struck  out,  he 
should  feel  himself  compelled  to  vote  against  the  bill." 

Benton  not  unnaturally  looked  upon  this  statement 
and  several  similar  ones  made  at  the  time  as  admissions 
of  the  reception  of  a  "  douceur"  to  concilitate  the  votes 
which  were  to  pass  the  bill,  and  at  once  denounced  the 
provision.  It  would  be  far  better,  he  said,  as  a  point  of 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    253 

economy  and  justice,  to  purchase  the  few  small  New  Eng 
land  factories  and  burn  them.  But  the  same  votes  which 
passed  the  bill  in  the  end  upheld  this  increase  of  rates. 
The  provision  here  concerned  was  probably  particularly 
obnoxious  to  him,  for  on  several  occasions  in  his  career 
he  moved  to  lower  the  duties  on  coarse  woollens  and 
coarse  woollen  blankets,  as  being  articles  not  only  of  ab 
solute  necessity,  but  used  also  in  the  main  by  the  laboring 
classes. 

In  1844  he  explained  as  follows  his  votes  on  the  vari 
ous  great  tariff  laws:  "I  voted  for  the  Act  of  1824 
cordially;  for  that  of  1828  reluctantly;  that  of  1832  with 
more  satisfaction,  because  it  reduced  duties  on  many 
necessaries,  especially  on  coarse  woollens  and  coarse 
blankets,  which  it  brought  down  to  5  per  cent. ;  I  voted 
against  the  Compromise  Act  because  I  thought  the  hori 
zontal  line  wrong  in  principle  and  for  other  reasons; 
voted  against  the  Act  of  1842  because  I  really  believed  it 
not  only  bad,  but  the  worst  Act  that  ever  has  been  passed 
on  the  subject."  And  it  may  be  added,  as  a  sample  of  the 
underlying  causes  which  always  largely  influence  the 
course  of  legislation,  that  he  thought  the  great  Act  of 
1828  to  have  been  primarily  a  move  in  the  political  game, 
devised  for  the  purpose  of  forcing  the  adherents  of  Jack 
son  to  make  themselves  unpopular  by  opposing  a  measure 
the  people  wanted.  He  said  of  it  in  1842  that  "  it  was  a 
bad  act,  brought  forward  for  a  political  purpose  .  .  . 
conceived  by  politicians  for  an  insidious,  and  prompted 
by  manufacturers  for  a  mercenary,  object ;  but  the  friends 
of  General  Jackson  did  not  mean  to  be  caught  in  the  trap 
which  was  set  for  them.  They  voted  for  the  act,  about 
which  the  country  had  been  worked  into  a  fever,  and  in 
obedience  to  the  will  of  their  constituents." 

As  to-day  reciprocity  is  much  talked  of  and  some 
think  it  the  device  of  men  of  recent  times,  it  will  be  well 
to  say  here  that  in  1840  Ben  ton  introduced  for  the  second 


254       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

time  the  resolutions  upon  the  subject  which  he  had  offered 
in  1831.  In  the  discussion  not  only  did  he  use  the  word 
"  reciprocity"  in  the  identical  sense  of  modern  days,  but 
the  resolutions  (as  has  been  already  explained)  contained 
the  very  plan  of  governmental  action  for  securing  favor 
able  treaties  which  modern  public  men  are  again  trying 
to  use  as  a  sort  of  safety-valve  or  vent  for  the  growing 
sentiment  against  the  tariff  wall.  Benton  maintained  that 
his  plan  was  merely  a  revival  of  the  ideas  advocated  in 
1793  in  a  report  of  Jefferson  and  in  resolutions  of  Madi 
son.* 

Benton  had  in  1826,  as  chairman  of  a  special  com 
mittee,  reported  a  constitutional  amendment  to  prohibit 
the  appointment  of  members  of  Congress  to  office  until 
the  expiration  of  the  term  of  the  President  during  which 
the  member  should  have  served,  and  he  also  at  the  same 
time  presented  a  formal  report  and  recommended  the 
passage  of  six  bills  intended  to  lessen  the  patronage  of 
the  President.  One  of  these  required  that  in  all  nomina 
tions  made  to  fill  vacancies  caused  by  the  removal  of  the 
incumbent  the  President  should  state  to  the  Senate  the 
fact  of  removal  and  the  reasons  therefor,  and  another 
repealed  the  provision  of  the  Act  of  1820  giving  a  fixed 
term  of  four  years  to  many  commissions.  The  latter 
recommendation  in  particular  would  have  removed  a 
great  evil,  but  the  bills  failed  of  passage. 

Benton  seems  to  have  been  always  opposed  to  the  way 
in  which  our  Executive  patronage  has  been  administered, 
and  there  is  no  little  reason  f  to  think  that  he  disapproved 

*  For  Benton's  opinions  on  the  tariff,  see  C.  D.,  vol.  xiii.,  1835-36, 
p.  884.  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  176,  177,  270.  Ibid.,  27th 
Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  836,  943.  Ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  659-661.  Ibid., 
28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  420-432,  440.  View,  i.,  pp.  95~iO2,  319,  320. 
Ibid.,  ii.,  pp.  120-131. 

t  Such  was,  moreover,  Mr.  Shepard's  opinion  (Life  of  Van 
Buren,  p.  180).  See  also  the  general  views  expressed  by  Benton  in 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF   THE   DAY    255 

of  the  extensive  removals  from  office  under  Jackson,  and 
he  is  even  said  by  Parton  *  to  have  been  one  of  "the  six 
intimate  friends"  of  the  President  who  defeated  the  nom 
ination  of  Henry  Lee,  which  excited  so  much  criticism 
because  of  the  private  character  of  the  candidate;  but, 
as  the  final  vote  in  the  Senate  was  unanimous  against 
Lee,  I  do  not  understand  Parton's  statement,  for  I  know 
of  no  evidence  that  Benton  was  specially  active  in  bring 
ing  about  the  rejection. 

There  were  bitter  contests  behind  the  closed  doors  of 
the  Senate  over  several  of  Jackson's  appointments,  but, 
as  a  rule,  Benton  supported  them  on  all  divisions.  There 
were,  however,  at  least  five  instances  f  in  which  he  voted 
against  them,  and  he  voted  in  favor  of  a  resolution  which 
was  aimed  against  the  President  and  expressed  disap 
proval  of  the  appointment  of  a  citizen  in  one  State  to 
office  in  another  without  some  evident  necessity.  This 
resolution  plainly  excited  Jackson's  anger,  but  Benton 
voted  in  favor  of  it  a  second  time  on  a  reconsideration, 
and  then  Jackson  sent  a  message  complaining  of  it  as  an 
unconstitutional  restraint  upon  the  action  of  the  Presi 
dent. 

This  evidence  is,  in  my  opinion,  too  little  on  which 


his  Autobiography.  For  Benton's  report  and  opinions  on  the  sub 
ject,  see  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.,  part  i,  1825-26,  pp.  114,  672.  Ibid.,  part  2, 
appendix,  pp.  133-138.  View,  i.,  pp.  80,  162. 

*  Jackson,  iii.,  p.  274,  and  see  ibid.,  ii.,  p.  653. 

t  Executive  Journal  of  the  Senate.  Cases  of  John  P.  Decatur 
and  of  Samuel  Cushman,  on  March  29,  1830 ;  of  James  B.  Gardner, 
on  May  10,  1830;  of  Samuel  Gwin,  on  December  22,  1831,  and  on 
July  10,  1832.  On  February  27,  1833,  Benton  voted  in  favor  of  Gwin, 
and  on  March  2,  1833,  the  nomination  to  a  like  office  was  approved 
without  apparent  objection.  The  resolution  referred  to.  was  passed 
in  executive  session  on  February  3,  1831 ;  was  reconsidered  and 
again  passed  on  March  2,  1833,  and  on  that  same  day  Jackson  sent 
in  his  message  of  objection. 


256       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

to  base  any  conclusion  that  the  relations  between  Benton 
and  Jackson  were  seriously  strained  during  part  of  Jack 
son's  term  of  office,  but  I  cannot  escape  the  suspicion  that 
such  was  the  case.  Both  men  were  hot-headed  and 
strong-willed,  and  Jackson  could  not  understand  or  brook 
opposition.  He  thought  he  was  always  right  and  could 
not  comprehend  that  a  friend  might  take  another  view. 
Probably,  moreover,  the  suspicion  receives  some  con 
firmation  from  the  fact,  which  has  been  shown  from 
Benton's  own  words,  that  he  was  entirely  ignorant 
of  the  intended  removal  of  the  public  deposits.  This 
step  was  taken  in  the  autumn  following  upon  the  Sen 
ate  vote  on  the  resolution  referred  to,  and  Benton  not 
only  knew  nothing  of  it,  but  was  absent  from  Wash 
ington  for  some  months  prior  to  its  issue.  He  would 
hardly  have  been  in  the  dark  on  a  vital  question  of 
policy  during  the  latter  part  of  Jackson's  service,  nor 
would  he  have  been  permitted  to  rusticate  in  Virginia 
while  a  matter  of  such  importance  was  under  consider 
ation. 

However  this  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Benton  and  Jackson  were,  at  least  during  Jackson's  sec 
ond  term,  the  closest  of  political  friends,  and  that  Benton 
had  more  influence  upon  public  affairs  then  than  at  any 
other  period  of  his  career.  Not  only  did  he  at  times  know 
in  advance  the  opinions  of  Jackson,  but  the  latter  con 
sulted  him  and  took  his  advice.  During  the  session  of 
1835-36  he  had  in  concert  with  Jackson  tried  in  vain 
to  secure  the  passage  of  a  law  to  lessen  the  reception  of 
paper  money  at  the  land-offices  for  the  purchase-money 
of  lands;  and  when  this  effort  failed  and,  shortly  after 
the  adjournment  of  Congress,  Jackson  decided,  against 
the  wish  of  his  Cabinet,  to  issue  the  famous  Specie  Cir 
cular,  Benton  was  not  only  evidently  fully  acquainted 
with  the  President's  intentions,  but  was  near  by  when 
the  final  Cabinet  session  upon  the  question  was  held,  and 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    257 

it  was  his  hand  which  wrote  the  circular,*  very  closely 
in  the  form  in  which  it  was  issued. 

Jackson  offered  him  the  mission  to  Russia,  and  in 
tended  to  nominate  him  to  the  command  of  the  army, 
if  war  occurred  with  Mexico  during  his  administration, 
and  also,  again,  in  the  event  of  war  with  France  in  1836; 
and  in  his  last  message  advocated  one  of  Benton's  favor 
ite  measures,  the  repeal  of  the  salt  tax,  and  more  than 
once  advised  the  passage  of  laws  upon  the  public  lands 
similar  to  those  for  which  Benton  had  long  contended. 
Van  Buren,  too,  who  was  so  largely  influenced  by  Jack 
son,  urged  Benton  to  enter  his  Cabinet  as  Secretary  of 
War.f 

At  a  later  date  Benton  took  occasion  to  defend  Jack 
son  from  the  furious  attacks  which  had  been  made  upon 
him  for  his  removals  from  office,  and  maintained  $  that 
in  Missouri  many  officers  of  the  opposite  party  had  been 
allowed  to  serve  out  their  terms  and  had  even  been  reap- 
pointed ;  and  he  emphasized  a  truth,  which  many  of  our 
historians  still  persistently  suppress,  that  Jackson  was 
only  the  second  President  (Jefferson  having  been  the 
first)  to  come  into  office  upon  a  political  revolution,  and 
that  both  found  the  offices  stuffed  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest  with  incumbents  appointed  almost  to  a  man 
from  the  opposite  party.  Even  to-day  we  do  not  expect 
a  Republican  or  a  Democrat  to  make  a  "  clean  sweep," 
when  he  succeeds  a  President  of  his  own  party;  this 
result  only  follows  upon  a  change.  It  was  natural,  then, 
that  neither  Madison  nor  John  Quincy  Adams,  for  in 
stance,  should  make  many  removals.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  have  never  been  more  complete  changes  of  party 

*  View,  i.,  p.  678.     See  also  ibid.,  pp.  364,  458,  462. 

t  Benton's  Autobiography. 

±  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  218,  219.  This  speech  was  made 
shortly  before  the  Whigs  were  to  assume  the  reins  of  office  in  1841, 
and  was  of  course  colored  by  this  fact. 


258       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

control  than  those  of  1801  and  1829,  and,  however  unde 
sirable  it  may  be,  many  changes  are  now  and  were  then 
unavoidable  in  such  a  case. 

Benton's  actions  and  opinions  upon  Jackson's  re 
movals  from  office  are  worthy  of  note  as  indicating  his 
independence  of  character;  but,  despite  these  differences 
between  him  and  the  President,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  they  were  in  general  very  close  to  each  other  during 
the  eight  years  of  Jackson's  presidency. 

Jackson's  administration  had  broken  away  from  the 
former  method  of  managing  the  money  affairs  of  the 
government,  but  no  sufficient  system  had  been  con 
structed  in  its  stead,  and  for  a  number  of  years  financial 
questions  were  very  much  under  discussion.  The  Demo 
crats,  and  not  a  few  public  men  of  the  opposite  party, 
had  a  profound  dislike  and  distrust  of  banks,  and  this 
feeling  was  by  no  means  confined  to  a  national  bank,  but 
extended  to  all  such  institutions.  The  general  subject 
was  much  discussed  on  the  bills  which  came  up  in  a  few 
years  to  recharter  certain  banks  in  the  District  of  Colum 
bia,  and  it  was  upon  this  occasion  that  John  Quincy 
Adams  wrote  in  his  Diary  *  that  "  there  is  no  more  des 
perate  undertaking  than  that  of  controlling  the  bank  in 
fluence,  and  it  is  irredeemably  and  vitally  dishonest." 
He  had  moved  an  amendment  to  make  an  express  pro 
hibition  of  an  abuse  then  prevalent  of  banks  actually 
paying  dividends  while  specie  payments  were  suspended 
by  them,  but  his  amendment  was  lost. 

Benton  also  offered  various  amendments  entirely  in 
vain,  and  moved,  for  example,  a  substitute  to  incorporate 
small  banks  under  several  carefully  guarded  limitations. 
Among  these  were  provisions  against  small  notes,  that 
nothing  but  gold  and  silver  should  compose  the  capital, 

*  Vol.  ix.,  p.  546,  sub  May  29,  1838.  See  also  C.  G.,  25th  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  pp.  18,  410,  415. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    259 

that  the  stock  should  be  taxed  like  other  property,  that 
they  should  deal  in  nothing  but  gold  and  silver  bullion 
and  foreign  and  domestic  bills  of  exchange,  that  their 
charters  should  be  forfeited  for  buying  or  selling  any 
current  coin,  and  especially  a  liability  on  the  part  of  stock 
holders  to  the  amount  of  their  stock  to  the  institution's 
creditors,  "  in  the  event  of  the  failure  of  the  bank  to  pay 
gold  and  silver,"  with  summary  process  against  the 
stockholders  for  the  recovery. 

Here  was  probably  a  point  of  prime  importance  in 
Benton's  mind,  for  he  held  that  our  banks  had  more  than 
once  stopped  specie  payments  without  any  sufficient  rea 
son,  and  he  was  doubtless  much  outraged  at  the  anomaly 
(which  all  must  admit  to  be  a  most  strange  one)  that 
one  class  of  debtors  should  have  the  power  simply  to 
refuse  for  the  time  being  to  pay  their  debts — for  that  is 
what  a  stoppage  of  specie  payments  amounts  to — and  yet 
be  in  effect  beyond  the  reach  of  legal  process,  and  even 
in  some  cases  go  on  paying  dividends  to  their  stockhold 
ers  at  the  very  time  when  they  were  thus  refusing  to  pay 
their  debts  to  the  outside  world. 

The  provision  for  summary  process  against  the  stock 
holders  in  such  cases  was  of  course  intended  to  stop  this 
anomaly,  as  was  also  a  provision  which  Van  Buren  urged 
in  his  message  at  the  special  session  in  1837  and  which 
Benton  and  others  advocated  more  than  once,  to  extend 
the  law  of  bankruptcy  to  banks.  Benton's  proposals  were 
defeated,  as  was  also  his  motion  to  require  a  specie  re 
serve  of  one-third — which  he  contended  was  indicated  by 
the  experience  of  the  Bank  of  England — instead  of  one- 
fourth.  Other  proposals  made  by  him  to  tax  banks  and 
particularly  their  issues  of  notes  met  the  same  fate,  both 
at  this  time  and  as  late  as  1855.* 

*  Some  of  the  speeches  and  motions  of  Benton  to  which  I  have 
referred  will  be  found  at  the  following  references :  C.  D.,  vol.  xii., 


26o       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

Another  chief  point  which  he  insisted  upon  was  the 
vital  importance  of  having  a  large  supply  of  the  precious 
metals  in  use  as  currency.  At  the  time  we  are  concerned 
with,  gold  had  entirely  disappeared,  and  mere  paper 
money  was  used  enormously,  both  in  governmental  and  in 
private  exchanges.  That  much  of  this  paper  was  utterly 
unsafe  in  times  of  stringency  cannot  be  disputed,  and 
the  opponents  of  the  United  States  Bank,  though  they 
had  turned  for  a  time  from  that  institution  to  the  State 
banks,  were  yet  anxious  to  escape  this  connection,  and 
it  will  be  found  that  Benton  maintained  that  they  had 
only  resorted  to  it  temporarily,  under  the  stress  of  a 
driving  political  necessity. 

The  Specie  Circular  was  inspired  by  a  desire  to  se 
cure  coin  for  the  federal  government  and  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  inpouring  of  the  notes  of  hundreds  of  banks  which 
were  conducted  on  unsound  principles;  and  Benton  and 
most  of  the  supporters  of  Jackson's  and  Van  Buren's  ad 
ministrations  were  hard-money  men.  And  by  this  Ben- 
ton  at  least  did  not  only  mean  paper  money  intended  to 
be  convertible  into  coin  at  all  times,  but  had  in  view  a 
very  extensive  use  of  actual  coin  and  an  exclusive  use  of 
it  in  governmental  affairs. 

In  one  of  his  speeches,  he  said  in  a  sententious  style  of 
oratory  by  no  means  confined  to  him  at  that  day :  "  I 
am  one  of  those  who  promised  gold,  not  paper.  I  prom 
ised  the  currency  of  the  Constitution,  not  the  currency  of 
corporations.  I  did  not  join  in  putting  down  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States  to  put  up  a  wilderness  of  local  banks. 
I  did  not  join  in  putting  down  the  paper  currency  of  a 
national  bank  to  put  up  a  national  paper  currency  of  a 

part  2.  1835-36,  pp.  1694,  1695,  1698-1720.  C  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
pp.  360,  361.  Ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  330,  331.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  502-510.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  54. 
Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  754.  Ibid.,  33d  Cong.,  ad 
Sess.,  pp.  904,  905. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    261 

thousand  local  banks.  I  did  not  strike  Caesar  to  make 
Antony  master  of  Rome." 

In  1841  again  he  showed  his  dislike  of  paper  in  an 
other  way.  Certain  treasury  notes  bearing  interest  had 
been  authorized  by  Congress  and  were  allowed  to  be 
reissued  after  having  once  been  paid,  and  the  govern 
ment  was  in  the  habit  of  paying  all  its  creditors,  including 
the  salaries  of  members  of  Congress,  in  the  proportion 
of  two-thirds  in  these  treasury  notes  and  only  one-third 
in  specie.  Benton  felt  that  citizens  could  hardly  success 
fully  oppose  this  u  forced  unconstitutional  tender,"  and 
determined  himself  to  raise  the  question;  so  he  had  a 
warrant  drawn  on  the  Bank  of  Washington  in  his  favor 
for  a  few  days'  salary,  endorsed  it  "  the  hard,  or  a  pro 
test,"  and  had  it  presented  for  payment  by  a  notary. 
When  the  bank  stated  that  only  treasury  notes  had  been 
deposited  with  it  to  meet  the  warrants,  and  declined  to 
pay  more  than  about  one-third  in  specie,  Benton  had  the 
note  protested,  and  then  called  the  matter  up  in  the 
Senate  *  and  moved  a  resolution  of  inquiry. 

He  says  that  this  proceeding  accomplished  his  purpose 
and  that  the  forced  tender  of  paper  money  was  imme 
diately  stopped.  Treasury  notes  were  always  among  his 
detestations;  and,  when  he  was  opposing  their  issue  in 
1846,  he  explained  that  in  Van  Buren's  time,  in  1837,  he 
had  only  yielded  his  convictions  to  the  fact  that  the  gov 
ernment  was  confronted  with  the  alternative  of  issuing 
them  or  seeing  a  bankrupt  treasury.  Speaking  of  his 
action  on  this  measure,  he  said  in  the  Senate  on  July  17, 
1846,  "  I  voted  for  it,  but  with  a  revulsion  of  stomach 
almost  convulsive,  and  with  a  misgiving  of  the  heart 
which  proved  to  be  prophetic." 

He  alsc  repeatedly  urged  measures  f  to  forbid  the 

*  C  G.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  210,  211.    View,  ii.,  pp.  406-408. 

t  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  2,  1835-36,  pp.  1745,  1746.  Ibid.,  vol.  xiii., 

part  i,  1836-37,  pp.  603,  etc.  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  16,  20, 


262       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

issuing  of  any  bank-note  under  twenty  dollars,  and  said 
he  would  have  preferred  to  make  the  limit  one  hundred 
dollars.  His  object  in  this  measure  was  to  create  a 
demand  for  coin,  and  he  repeatedly  inveighed  against  the 
prevalence  of  paper  among  us,  and  spoke  in  the  highest 
terms  of  the  French  system  and  their  large  amount  of 
actual  gold  and  silver  in  daily  use.  He  contended  also 
against  our  exclusion  of  nearly  all  foreign  coin,  and 
maintained  that  the  Constitution  had  meant  that  such  coin 
should  circulate  among  us  as  currency  (as  it  had  done 
earlier),  and  it  was  not  many  years  before  he  had  some 
success  in  this  direction. 

One  influence  which  led  him  to  this  contention  was 
that  it  was  doubted  whether  there  existed  gold  and  silver 
enough  to  carry  on  all  the  commerce  of  the  world,  and 
this  he  met  by  elaborate  statistics;  but  the  chief  motive 
guiding  him  was  probably  his  belief  that  in  no  other  way 
could  the  West  secure  any  gold,  for  the  trend  of  com 
merce  caused  currency  to  flow  from  there  to  the  North 
east.  He  wanted  to  let  foreign  coin  come  in  to  fill  this 
vacuum,  by  way  of  the  Mississippi,  in  payment  for  the 
large  trade  down  that  river. 

So  persistently  did  he  urge  all  these  measures  for  sup 
plying  hard  money  to  the  country  that  for  a  time  his  oppo 
nents  called  him  "  Gold  Humbug,"  but  this  term  of  op 
probrium  gave  way  to  the  nickname  of  "  Old  Bullion," 
while  the  gold  coins  which  began  in  a  few  years  "  to  shine 
through  the  interstices  of  the  long  silken  purse  and  to  be 
locked  up  safely  in  the  farmer's  trusty  oaken  chest"  were 
dubbed  "  Benton's  mint-drops ;"  and  more  than  one  story 
has  been  told  of  his  dogged  and  universal  adherence  to  his 


42,  49.  It  is  of  interest  to  find  that  Nicholas  Biddle  also  was  against 
small  notes — by  which,  however,  he  meant  those  under  five  dollars — 
and  in  favor  of  a  wider  metallic  basis  for  the  currency.  Catterall's 
Second  Bank,  p.  450. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY     263 

principles  on  this  subject  and  of  repeated  refusals  by  him 
to  accept  in  change  for  gold  what  he  called  "  a  pestilen 
tial  compound  of  lamp-black  and  rags,  yclept  govern 
mental  paper." 

An  eye-witness  *  has,  for  instance,  told  me  of  seeing 
him  hand  a  twenty-dollar  gold  piece  to  a  hotel  clerk  to 
pay  his  bill;  and,  when  offered  notes  in  change,  Benton 
made  the  clerk  go  and  get  coin,  saying  to  his  companion : 
"  This  is  the  money  the  Constitution  provides,  and  I  will 
not  have  anything  to  do  with  any  other  kind."  And  his 
son-in-law  once  saw  a  precisely  similar  scene,  Benton 
exclaiming,  "  What !  Do  you  want  a  coroner's  jury  to 
sit  and  say,  k  Old  Bullion  died  of  shinplasters  ?' '  On  a 
long  journey  he  made  to  the  South  in  1837,  he  says  he 
always  gave  out  specie  in  payment  and  was  never  offered 
rags ;  and  he  thought  that  no  one  would  carry  notes  when 
he  could  get  coin. 

An  inspiring  view  of  the  statesmanlike  methods  of 
that  day  is  afforded  by  a  discussion  in  the  Senate  in 
1834,  upon  Webster's  motion  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill 
to  revive  the  United  States  Bank.  It  is  evident  that 
Calhoun,  Benton,  and  Silas  Wright  had  been  comparing 
views  as  to  the  best  mode  of  putting  the  government's 
finances  upon  a  sound  basis,  and  had  found  so  many 
points  of  agreement  that  they  arranged  to  explain  their 
opinions.  Webster's  motion  for  a  new  bank  was  used  for 
the  purpose,  and  with  Benton's  consent  Calhoun  spoke 
first.  He  expressed  himself  strongly  in  favor  of  meas 
ures  to  do  what  he  called  "  unbank  the  banks"  and  in 
tended  to  lead  to  an  increase  of  metallic  currency,  among 
which  he  specified  provisions  to  stop  gradually  the  issue  of 
small  notes,  to  require  small  payments  to  the  federal 
treasury  to  be  made  in  coin,  and  the  raising  of  the  value  of 
gold  in  coinage  so  that  it  should  come  into  the  country  as 

*  Hon.  Isaac  H.  Sturgeon,  long  Comptroller  in  St  Louis. 


264       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

coin;  but  Calhoun  was  in  favor  of  a  modified  national 
bank,  and  thought  the  results  aimed  at  could  be  attained 
in  no  other  way. 

As  soon  as  Calhoun  closed,  Benton  arose  and  made 
a  long  and  carefully  prepared  speech  *  upon  the  subject, 
of  course  against  a  national  bank,  but  otherwise  in  the 
same  general  line  as  Calhoun  had  urged.  The  plan  of 
suppressing  small  notes  was  no  new  idea  to  Benton,  who 
claimed  to  be  its  author,  but  he  went  also  at  length  into 
the  question  of  the  ratio  between  the  two  chief  metals 
of  coinage,  and  later  in  the  session  a  statute  was  passed 
changing  the  ratio. 

It  is  conceded  that  under  the  old  law  gold  was  under 
valued  at  fifteen  to  one,  and  Benton  writes  f  that  at  first 
the  general  opinion  was  that  fifteen  and  five-eighths  to 
one  was  the  true  ratio;  but  he  studied  the  subject  from 
the  experience  of  the  Spanish  dominions  in  South  Amer 
ica,  where  he  found  that  for  three  hundred  years  the 
proportion  had  been  sixteen  to  one  and  the  two  metals 
had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  circulated  concurrently  all  the 
time;  and  he  succeeded  in  convincing  members  that  this 
was  the  true  ratio,  so  that  a  law  establishing  it  was  passed 
by  both  Houses  by  large  majorities.  It  appears  to  be 
the  general  opinion  that  this  ratio  undervalued  silver, 
and  that  metal  consequently  in  turn  largely  disappeared. 
This  tendency  was  of  course  greatly  augmented  by  the 
vast  discoveries  of  gold  made  some  years  later,  and  fur 
ther  legislation  became  necessary  to  keep  even  minor  sil 
ver  coins  from  disappearing  from  circulation. 

During  these  years  when  the  whole  financial  manage- 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  x.,  part  I,  1833-34,  PP-  1073-1107.  Calhoun's  speech 
immediately  precedes  that  of  Benton.  See  also  View,  i.,  pp.  434-458. 

fView,  i.,  pp.  469,  470.  Benton  maintained  that  the  new  ratio 
proved  accurate  and  said  in  the  end  of  1837  that  "  the  premium  on 
American  gold  and  American  silver  is  now  exactly  the  same."  C.  G., 
25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  43. 


FINANCIAL   MEASURES    OF   THE   DAY    265 

ment  of  the  country  was  so  much  under  discussion,  one 
of  the  greatest  difficulties  to  be  solved  was  the  safe  keep 
ing  and  paying  out  of  the  federal  moneys,  and  the  solu 
tion  of  this  by  the  sub-treasury  system  was  the  great 
accomplishment  of  Van  Buren's  day.  The  plan  was  not 
altogether  new,  and  had  indeed  been  proposed  in  outline 
in  1834,  but  was  then  opposed  by  the  administration 
members. 

Benton  explains  that  they  had  felt  that  Jackson  was 
not  strong  enough  to  meet  the  hostility  both  of  the  United 
States  Bank  and  of  the  State  banks  at  once,  and  that  hence 
it  was  a  political  necessity  to  avoid  the  opposition  of 
the  State  banks  and  to  use  them  for  a  time  as  a  "  half 
way  house."  At  least  in  1836,  however,  he  had  in  mind 
the  idea  of  seeing  "  the  federal  government  wholly  dis 
connected  from  the  local  banks"  and  of  using  "  the  mints 
and  branch  mints,  with  a  few  additional  ones,  as  places 
of  deposit  for  the  public  moneys ;"  and  he  proposed  meas 
ures  in  this  general  direction  in  Congress  at  about  that 
time.* 

These  general  ideas  were  floating  in  the  minds  of 
numbers  of  public  men  for  some  years,  but  to  Van  Buren 
undoubtedly  belongs  the  chief  credit  for  the  measure. 
Not  only  did  he  largely  formulate  the  plan  which  was 
adopted,  but  it  was  his  energy  and  courage  which  put  it 
on  the  statute-book.  Proposed  in  his  first  message  as 
President  at  the  special  session  which  the  distress  and 
panic  of  the  time  forced  him  to  call,  it  failed  for  some 
years,  and  became  a  law  only  after  the  most  bitter  oppo 
sition,  upon  the  fourth  effort  in  June,  1840.  Benton,  of 
course,  supported  it  most  earnestly;  but  it  was  destined 
to  be  soon  repealed  by  the  Whigs  as  one  of  the  first  meas 
ures  they  passed  after  their  triumphant  entrance  upon 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  158,  554.  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix, 
pp.  120,  121. 


266       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

power  in  1841 ;  they  failed,  however,  in  the  effort  to 
enact  other  laws  upon  the  public  finances,  and  the  sub- 
treasury  was  again  enacted  by  the  Democrats  early  in 
the  succeeding  administration  of  Polk. 

At  the  time  of  the  repeal  of  the  sub-treasury  by  the 
Whigs,  they  had  intended  to  recreate  a  national  bank,  and 
it  is  needless  to  say  that  here  they  met  with  the  most  bit 
ter  opposition  on  the  part  of  Benton, — particularly  upon 
the  second  bill,  which  he  thought  was  intended  to  bring 
the  old  United  States  Bank  back  to  its  former  power  by 
a  provision  that  corporations  might  subscribe  to  the  stock 
of  the  intended  institution. 

On  one  occasion  during  these  debates  he  announced 
that  he  declared  war  upon  the  proposed  bank  and  should 
"  devote  himself,  regardless  of  all  earthly  consequences, 
to  its  utter  destruction,"  and  again  that  he  was  against 
the  institution  "  as  the  Babylonish  harlot  of  our  morals 
and  politics;  he  had  enlisted  for  the  war  against  her; 
he  wanted  no  quarter ;  and  he  was  ready  to  take  political 
death  at  any  moment  that  it  would  come  in  so  '  just  and 
holy  a  cause.' '  When,  upon  the  veto  by  Tyler  of  their 
first  bill  upon  the  subject,  the  Whigs  strove  to  overcome 
the  scruples  of  the  ultra  strict  constructionist  whom  they 
had  been  the  means  of  putting  in  the  presidential  chair, 
by  the  use  of  an  absurd  title  for  the  proposed  bank,  de 
scribing  it  as  "  a  corporation  to  be  styled  the  Fiscal  Cor 
poration  of  the  United  States,"  the  whole  Senate  ap 
preciated  the  folly  of  the  lengthy  title,  and  Benton  threw 
the  members  into  laughter  by  the  story  of  a  Mississippi 
steamer,  which  had  been  named  "  La  Belle  Creole"  after 
a  beautiful  girl  in  New  Orleans. 

This  fine  title  was  printed  in  golden  letters  on  the 
steamer's  sides,  but  nothing  could  save  the  name  "  from 
the  catastrophe  to  which  all  long  titles  are  subjected.  It 
was  immediately  abbreviated,  and  in  the  abbreviation 
sadly  deteriorated.  At  first  they  called  her  the  bell — not 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    267 

the  French  belle,  which  signifies  fine  or  beautiful — but 
the  plain  English  bell,  which  in  Holy  Scriptures  was 
defined  to  be  a  tinkling  cymbal.  This  was  bad  enough, 
but  worse  was  coming.  It  so  happens  that  the  vernacular 
pronunciation  of  Creole  in  the  Kentucky  waters  is  cre- 
owl;  so  they  began  to  call  this  beautiful  boat  the  cre-owl; 
but  things  did  not  stop  here.  It  was  too  extravagant  to 
employ  two  syllables  w*hen  one  would  answer  as  well  and 
be  so  much  more  economical;  so  the  first  half  of  the 
name  was  dropped  and  the  last  retained ;  and  thus  '  La 
Belle  Creole' — the  beautiful  Creole — sailed  up  and  down 
the  Mississippi  all  her  life  by  the  name,  style,  title,  and 
description  of  '  The  Owl.'  "  * 

Benton  was  evidently  of  opinion  that  Tyler's  conduct 
as  to  the  first  bank  bill,  and  far  more  as  to  the  second 
one,  was  dishonorable,  and  he  had  refused  to  be  of  the 
party  of  Democratic  Senators  who  made  a  complimentary 
call  upon  the  President  after  the  first  veto.  He  adds  f 
that  he  was  not  even  suspected  of  any  effort  to  alienate 
Tyler  from  the  Whigs,  and  devotes  a  chapter  to  the 
secret  history  of  the  second  bill,  which,  in  his  opinion, 
shows  that  it  was  framed  exactly  to  suit  Tyler,  and  that 
the  latter  then  tried  by  underhand  means  to  secure  its 
defeat  in  Congress,  and,  upon  failing  in  this  effort,  vetoed 
his  own  measure,  all  under  the  flattering  hope  of  creating 
a  party  of  his  own. 

The  history  of  the  panic  of  1837  does  not  need  to  be 
gone  into  here,  but  there  are  some  points  about  it  which 
touch  Benton  and  must  be  slightly  considered.  He  was 
one  of  those  who  foresaw  and  predicted  the  distress.  In 
one  of  his  speeches  on  the  expunging  resolution,  on  Jan 
uary  27  of  that  year,  he  spoke  of  the  ability  of  the 


*  View,  ii.,  pp.  333,  341.     C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix, 
pp.  120,  201.    Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  379. 
f  View,  ii.,  pp.  328,  329,  342-350. 


268       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

government  "  to  ride  out  the  storm  which  every  discern 
ing  mind  must  see  ahead,"  and  in  February  he  called  Van 
Buren,  then  the  President-elect,  into  a  committee-room 
and  said  that,  in  his  opinion,  they  "  were  on  the  eve  of  an 
explosion  of  the  paper  system  and  of  a  general  suspen 
sion  of  the  banks."  *  He  had  intended  to  explain  his 
reasons,  but  was  much  miffed  and  volunteered  no  fur 
ther  opinions  when  Van  Buren  said,  "  Your  friends  think 
you  a  little  exalted  in  the  head  on  that  subject."  He  adds 
that  he  said  to  himself,  "  You  will  soon  feel  the  thunder 
bolt,"  and  expresses  regret  that  he  did  not  go  on  and 
possibly  make  Van  Buren  see  the  matter  as  he  did  and 
thus  lead  to  some  measures  to  mitigate  the  catastrophe 
which  broke  upon  the  new  administration  in  May,  1837. 

Again,  after  the  belated  resumption  by  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Bank  of  the  United  States  f  in  August,  1838,  Ben- 
ton  foresaw  that  the  resumption  was  but  temporary,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  session  of  Congress  of  1838-39 — there 
fore  somewhere  about  March  4,  1839 — told  Van  Buren 
that  the  bank  would  suspend  once  more  before  they  met 
again.  Van  Buren  listened  to  him  more  closely  than  on 
the  prior  occasion,  and  when  they  met  the  next  Novem 
ber  was  the  first  to  refer  to  Benton's  parting  prophecy.:): 
The  bank  had  suspended  in  the  preceding  October,  and 
was  destined  never  to  resume  again. 

During  the  period  of  distress  which  began  so  soon 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  xiii.,  part  I,  1836-37,  p.  603.  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  120,  121.  View,  ii.,  pp.  10,  n. 

t  The  legal  title  of  this  institution  under  the  Pennsylvania 
statute  was  "  The  President,  Directors  and  Company  of  the  Bank  of 
the  United  States," — i.e.,  precisely  the  same  as  it  had  been  under  the 
federal  statute  of  1816.  Prof.  Catterall  is  in  error  when  he  says 
(Second  Bank,  p.  372)  that  it  was  chartered  by  the  State  "  under  the 
style  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States  of  Pennsylvania"  (italics 
mine). 

IView,  ii.,  p.  94. 


FINANCIAL   MEASURES   OF   THE   DAY    269 

after  Van  Buren's  inauguration  all  financial  questions 
were  discussed  from  the  partisan  *  stand-point,  and  ad 
ministration  men  generally  maintained  that  the  suspen 
sion  was  quite  unnecessary  and  was  brought  about  for 
the  express  purpose  of  forcing  the  government  to  resort 
again  to  a  bank.  Benton,  who  had  predicted  the  panic, 
maintained  that  it  had  been  purposely  hastened  with  this 
view,  and  he  tells  of  the  call  which  Nicholas  Biddle  made 
upon  Van  Buren  early  in  the  days  of  the  panic,  and 
thought  the  purpose  of  the  visit  was  to  be  consulted  as  to 
the  state  of  the  finances.  There  is  evidence  that  about 
this  time  Biddle  was  of  opinion  that  the  government  was 

*  The  partisanship  was  by  no  means  confined  to  the  lower 
classes  nor  to  one  side.  Few  things  more  ultra  can  be  found  than 
a  speech  which  Abbott  Lawrence,  a  leading  business  man  of  Boston, 
is  said  to  have  made  at  this  time.  This  gentleman  belonged  to  that 
class  which  is  pre-eminently  eloquent  against  any  one  else  who 
criticises  authority,  but  many  a  nihilist  and  socialist  has  gone  to  jail 
for  much  less  radical  language  than  he  seems  to  have  indulged  in 
against  the  federal  administration.  In  May,  1837,  at  the  very  time 
when  thousands  were  ruined  and  all  were  in  a  wild  state  of  panicky 
terror,  he  saw  fit  to  say  in  a  public  address  in  Boston :  "  No  overt 
act  ought  to  be  committed  until  the  laws  of  self-preservation  com 
pelled  a  forcible  resistance,  but  the  time  might  come  when  the  crew 
must  seize  the  ship."  Shepard's  Van  Buren,  pp.  275,  276.  I  cannot 
find  this  speech  in  the  Memoir  of  Lawrence  by  H.  A.  Hill,  but  this 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  accuracy  of  Mr.  Shepard's  statement.  The 
very  great  lawyer,  Horace  Binney,  too,  at  the  time  of  the  Panic 
Session,  three  years  earlier,  had  made  a  like  speech  in  the  streets  of 
Baltimore,  which  was  surely  an  incitation  to  riot  and  violence. 
Addressing  a  large  and  excited  mob,  he  said :  "  The  people  were 
competent  to  keep  their  public  servants  within  legitimate  limits ; 
that  usurpations  always  commenced  by  tampering  with  the  public 
funds ;  that  so  long  as  the  laws  were  permitted  to  govern,  we  pos 
sessed  the  means  to  restrain  authority  within  proper  bounds,  but 
that  if  the  laws  failed  to  afford  the  remedy  for  abuses,  the  people 
possessed  the  physical  power  to  maintain  their  rights;  that  the 
Constitution  and  laws  of  the  country  must  be  sustained,  peaceably 
if  it  can  be  done,  by  force  if  it  is  necessary."  Life  by  C.  C.  Binney, 
pp.  120,  121. 


270       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

disposed  to  return  again  to  the  use  of  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  but  his  interview  with  Van  Buren  closed 
without  one  word  as  to  public  affairs. 

The  opponents  of  the  bank  also  maintained  that  the 
suspension  was  persisted  in  by  many  financial  institutions, 
and  particularly  by  the  successor  of  the  United  States 
Bank,  far  longer  than  there  was  any  need  for;  and  this 
contention  finds  support  from  the  fact  that  the  New  York 
banks,  in  the  face  of  the  strongest  opposition,  took  meas 
ures  to  resume,  and  carried  out  their  purpose,  without 
serious  trouble,  quite  a  time  sooner  than  did  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Bank  of  the  United  States  and  those  institutions 
which  followed  its  lead.* 

Of  course  for  the  time  the  administration  bore  the 
brunt  of  the  blame,  and  the  opposition  rang  the  changes 
upon  the  effects  of  "  tampering  with  the  currency"  and  of 
the  "  experiments"  with  the  finances,  while  burlesque 
notes  and  coins  reached  f  Benton  and  others  of  his  way  of 
thinking,  inscribed  with  sentences  such  as  "  Benton's  cur 
rency,"  "  mint-drops,"  "  the  gold  humbug  exploded," 
"  this  is  what  you  have  brought  the  country  to."  There 
was  nothing  to  do  but  submit  and  await  the  subsiding 
of  the  storm's  fury;  but  Benton  always  maintained  that 
the  forbidding  of  small  notes,  the  admission  of  foreign 
silver,  the  change  of  the  ratio  between  gold  and  silver, 
the  system  of  branch  mints,  and  the  declared  purpose  of 
the  administration  to  revive  "  the  currency  of  the  Consti 
tution"  had  been  the  means  of  greatly  moderating  the 
distress  by  causing  the  importation  of  gold,  so  that  the 
country  was  not  found  absolutely  devoid  of  specie  in 
18384  And  to  the  mere  ridicule  of  his  measures  which 

*  View,  ii.,  p.  19.    J.  Q.  Adams's  Diary,  ix.,  p.  363. 

t  View,  ii.,  p.  26.  Sketch  of  Benton  in  Duyckinck's  "  Portrait 
Gallery,"  ii.,  p.  196. 

J  Statistics  show  that  specie  was  largely  imported  into  this  coun 
try  after  1834,  while  the  exports  decreased. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    271 

his  opponents  had  indulged  in  he  was  able  before  long  to 
retort  as  follows,  as  the  pall  of  the  panic  began  to  lift 
before  the  middle  of  1838, — far  more  quickly  than  had 
been  the  case  in  prior  instances : 

"  It  is  owing  to  our  '  experiments'  on  the  currency — to  our 
'  humbug'  of  a  gold  and  silver  currency — to  our  '  tampering  with' 
the  monetary  system — it  is  owing  to  these  that  we  have  had  this 
signal  success  in  this  last  stoppage,  and  are  now  victorious  over  all 
the  prophets  of  woe,  and  over  all  the  architects  of  mischief.  These 
experiments,  this  humbugging,  and  this  tampering,  has  increased  our 
specie  in  six  years  from  twenty  millions  to  one  hundred  millions; 
and  it  is  these  one  hundred  millions  of  gold  and  silver  which  has 
sustained  the  country  and  the  government  under  the  shock  of  the 
stoppage,  has  enabled  the  honest  solvent  banks  to  resume,  and  will 
leave  the  insolvent  and  political  banks  without  excuse  or  justifica 
tion  for  not  resuming.  Our  experiments — I  love  the  word,  and  am 
sorry  that  gentlemen  of  the  opposition  have  ceased  to  repeat  it — 
have  brought  an  avalanche  of  gold  and  silver  into  the  country."  * 

In  the  whole  course  of  the  contest  with  the  United 
States  Bank  and  of  the  questions  which  grew  out  of  it, 
many  charges  of  a  merely  trivial  nature  were  made  on 
both  sides ;  but  this  is  always  the  case  in  desperate  politi 
cal  contests,  and  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  hold  the 
main  issue  chiefly  in  view  and  not  to  become  lost  in  the 
maze  of  these  mere  details.  In  this  connection  it  should 
be  noted  that  even  Webster  came  in  a  few  years  to  admit 
that  a  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  an  obsolete  idea, 
and  at  least  some  of  our  historians  of  generally  federalist 
beliefs  concede  that  on  the  main  point  the  anti-bank  party 
was  right,  and  that  it  was  to  the  best  interests  of  the 
country  that  the  United  States  Bank  should  cease  to  exist. 
Its  vast  centralized  power,  capable  of  springing  into  in 
stant  action  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other 
upon  the  mere  order  of  its  central  governing  body,  and 

*  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  352.  See  also  ibid., 
25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  42-44. 


272       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

thus  sure  to  exert  a  stupendous  influence  upon  the  lives 
and  fortunes  of  many  thousands,  was  a  serious  menace 
to  the  proper  growth  of  our  institutions. 

If  this  be  the  case,  if  the  bank  ought  not  to  have  con 
tinued  to  exist,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  that  result  could 
not  have  been  reached  by  the  soft  and  delicate  methods 
which  prevail  in  a  lady's  parlor.  Much  brutality  was, 
humanly  speaking,  unavoidable  between  such  powers  as 
were  arrayed  against  each  other  in  the  contest,  and  we 
must  simply  charge  to  the  frailty  of  human  nature  the 
many  abuses  that  were  indulged  in  during  the  hurly  of 
the  battle. 

Nowhere,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  fact  that  the  bank 
ought  to  have  come  to  an  end  more  conclusively  shown 
than  in  a  recent  book  *  written  from  a  friendly  point  of 
view  and  whose  author  thinks  a  great  mistake  was  made 
in  its  destruction.  The  fact  f  that  by  1826  and  even 
earlier — before  the  contest  with  Jackson  was  dreamed  of 
— the  institution  was  largely  in  the  hands  of  one  man, 
and  the  board  nearly  a  cipher,  is  possibly  trivial;  but  it 
is  a  far  more  serious  thing  that  by  1831,  when  the  ques 
tion  of  recharter  was  coming  under  consideration,  a  very 
large  extension  of  its  accommodations  began,  and  the 
famous  "  race-horse  bills"  of  the  branches  were  once 
more  hurrying  about  unpaid  from  one  part  of  the  country 
to  another,  so  that  the  matter  soon  got  beyond  the  control 
of  the  management,^  and  before  long  the  bank  was  in  a 
very  grave  position,  and  could  save  itself  only  by  obtain 
ing  an  extension  of  the  payment  of  a  government  loan.§ 

Again,  from  1829  it  is  hard  to  deny  that  it  was  much 
too  close  to  politics.  Lobbying  in  its  own  interest,  ||  it 

*  Catterall's  Second  Bank. 

f  Ibid.,  pp.  279,  280. 

t  Ibid.,  pp.  145,  149,  153-160,  391-393- 

§  Ibid.,  pp.  146-150,  268  et  seq. 

||  Ibid.,  p,  251. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE   DAY    273 

moreover  printed  and  circulated  thousands  of  Congres 
sional  reports  and  of  Jackson's  veto  message  and  other 
public  documents,  with  a  view  to  obtaining  an  extension 
of  its  charter,  so  that  it  spent  between  1829  and  1834  over 
ninety-five  thousand  dollars  for  this  "  extra  printing."  * 
It  furnished  printed  matter  in  favor  of  the  bank  to  news 
papers  in  large  quantity,  and  made  at  least  one  loan  to-  an 
editor  of  a  newspaper  which  then  favored  the  bank.f 
From  1829  and  even  earlier  it  was  in  the  habit  of  cashing 
drafts  for  salaries  of  members  of  Congress  at  a  distance 
without  charge  for  exchange,  and  these  salaries  and  those 
of  other  government  officials  were  at  times  paid  before 
they  became  due.  To  such  an  extent  was  this  done  that 
at  a  single  session  four  hundred  thousand  dollars  were 
expended  in  this  way,  and  even  the  partisan  John  Quincy 
Adams  hinted  a  gentle  doubt  as  to  the  propriety  of  the 
indulgence.^: 

In  the  matter  of  loans  to  Congressmen,  Professor 
Sumner  §  says  that  attempts  were  made  in  1832  and  in 
1835-36  to  investigate  them,  but  were  abandoned  be 
cause,  as  John  Quincy  Adams  says,  they  "  cut  both 
ways."  But,  if  politicians  of  that  day  on  neither  side 
could  afford  to  have  the  truth  known,  we  now  know  that 
as  early  as  1829  a  loan  to  a  member  from  New  York 
was  defended  on  the  ground  that  the  existence  of  the  bank 
would  soon  depend  on  Congress,  ||  and  the  following 
specific  instances  are  beyond  doubt :  John  Forsyth,  who 
was  a  leading  Democrat,  but  a  personal  friend  of  Nicho 
las  Biddle,  and  who  in  1829  regretted  Jackson's  strictures 
on  the  bank,  but  later  was  an  anti-bank  man,  was  in  1831 


*  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  pp.  199,  200,  240,  241,  251,  265. 
f  Ibid.,  pp.  199,  256-263. 
§  Ibid.,  pp.  252,  253. 
§  Life  of  Jackson,  p.  321. 
]!  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  p.  253. 
18 


274       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

loaned  a  large  sum  at  a  long  date  secured  on  mortgage ;  * 
Henry  Clay  was  loaned  five  thousand  dollars  at  a  branch 
in  1832;  f  and  McDuffie,  the  chairman  of  the  Committee 
of  Ways  and  Means  and  a  most  important  man,  was  in 
1833  loaned  the  then  stupendous  sum  of  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  on  mortgage,  with  an  agreement  to 
renew  indefinitely,  J — all  loans  on  mortgage  being  of 
course  against  the  policy  of  the  bank. 

As  the  contest  grew  more  bitter,  too,  not  only  did  the 
president  of  the  bank  direct  that  during  his  absence  the 
government  directors  should  not  be  allowed  to  see  any 
thing,  either  books  or  papers,  whatever  might  be  the  con 
sequences^  but  in  1834 — during  the  days  of  the  Panic 
Session — we  are  told  by  this  same  author  that  the  bank's 
intentional  contractions  of  credit  in  order  to  force  a 
charter  were  in  excess  of  any  possible  danger,  and  that  it 
is  plain  "  they  had  determined  to  exert  all  the  power  of 
the  bank  to  secure  a  new  charter,  and  that  they  believed 
it  possible  to  succeed  by  causing  panic  and  distress."  || 

When,  therefore,  the  history  of  the  bank  is  recalled, 
and  it  is  remembered  that  under  its  first  management  it 
was  looted  and  practically  ruined  by  gross  fraud;  that 
under  the  second  management  it  was  nearly  useless  and 
fulfilling  but  a  fraction  of  the  purposes  for  which  it  was 
created ;  and  that,  finally,  under  the  third  management — 
that  of  a  president  and  directors  of  high  character — all 

*  Catterall's  Second  Bank,  p.  253.  Life  of  C.  J.  Ingersoll,  by 
William  M.  Meigs,  p.  167. 

t  Ibid.,  p.  388. 

$  Ibid.,  pp.  253,  254.  In  1829  Biddle  had  successfully  urged  Mc 
Duffie  to  make  a  report  from  the  House  Committee  answering  Jack 
son's  strictures  upon  the  bank.  Biddle  supplied  the  facts  for  this 
report,  and  the  report  upon  the  same  subject  in  the  Senate  was  much 
of  it  word  for  word  as  he  wrote  it.  Ibid.,  p.  198. 

§  Ibid.,  p.  310. 

||  Ibid.,  pp.  329-331,  and  see  pp.  314,  318,  321,  343,  346,  426.  See 
also  Henry  Adams's  Life  of  Gallatin,  pp.  658-662. 


FINANCIAL    MEASURES    OF    THE    DAY    275 

the  abuses  above  detailed  from  a  friendly  book  occurred 
and  have  come  to  light,  surely  no  further  evidence  of  the 
danger  and  harmfulness  of  such  an  institution  is  needed. 
To  say  that  these  abuses  occurred  only  because  the  grant 
ing  of  a  new  charter  was  opposed  not  only  does  not  touch 
some  of  the  most  important  of  them,  but  is  no  answer  at 
all  to  any  one  of  them.  For,  if  the  continuance  of  the 
bank  could  not  be  opposed  in  the  legislature  without  such 
a  result,  then  most  assuredly  no  national  bank  should 
exist  and  the  perhaps  instinctive  judgment  of  Jackson  and 
Benton  and  the  many  others  who  are  so  often  charged 
with  abysmal  ignorance  of  banking  was  right. 


CHAPTER    XVI 

OREGON DISCOVERY  AND  EARLY  HISTORY FACTS  AS  TO 

OWNERSHIP EFFORTS  OF  BENTON  AND  OTHERS  IN 

CONGRESS  TO  PROTECT  OUR  INTERESTS THE  TREATY 

OF  1846 — BENTON'S  SHARE  IN  BRINGING  IT  ABOUT — 
THE  ASHBURTON  TREATY  OF  1842 

IT  has  been  seen  that  from  an  early  period  Benton 
had  taken  a  deep  interest  in  the  region  known  as  "  the 
Oregon  country."  With  the  instinct  of  a  statesman,  he 
looked  ahead  and  foresaw  the  march  of  American  civili 
zation  to  the  summit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and 
thence  down  to  the  ocean;  and  though  in  his  earlier  life 
he  did  not  expect  the  settlements  on  the  Pacific  to  remain 
an  integral  part  of  the  United  States,  yet  he  thought  it 
of  great  importance  that  we  should  establish  them  and 
make  them  our  friends ;  and  later,  when  the  invention  of 
railroads  rendered  possible  a  close  union  of  interest  be 
tween  regions  far  apart  and  separated  by  an  immense 
range  of  mountains,  he  soon  understood  the  effect  this 
was  to  have  upon  the  problem  and  gloried  in  our  compact 
territory  stretching  from  ocean  to  ocean. 

He  had  undoubtedly  an  extensive  knowledge  of  Ore 
gon  and  of  the  whole  region  beyond  the  Mississippi  at  a 
time  when  few  of  our  public  men  knew  more  than  that 
there  was  such  a  country.  We  have  now  reached  a  period 
in  his  career  at  which,  in  order  to  understand  the  leading 
and  immensely  courageous  part  he  is  about  to  play,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  examine  to  some  extent  the  history 
of  this  far  Western  country. 

The  Spaniards  were  unquestionably  the  first  discov 
erers  of  the  Northwest  coast,  while  the  strongest  English 
claim  was  to  be  found  in  the  famous  Nootka  Conven- 
276 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  277 

tion  of  1790  and  their  subsequent  explorations  and  settle 
ment.  By  this  treaty  Spain  conceded  to  Great  Britain 
certain  rights  which  the  English  always  contended  in 
cluded  that  of  founding  permanent  settlements  or  colo 
nies  in  the  region,  while  we  maintained  that  only  fishing 
and  trading  stations  were  referred  to,  and  that,  in  any 
event,  the  treaty  had  become  void  by  the  war  between 
England  and  Spain  in  1796  and  had  not  been  revived. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  English  did  for  a  number 
of  years  go  on,  without  protest  from  Spain,  and  make 
settlements  such  as  they  claimed  the  treaty  authorized, 
particularly  those  on  and  near  the  waters  of  the  Frazer 
River,  which  were  started  in  1805,  came  to  be  called  New 
Caledonia,  and  were  at  all  times  under  their  undisputed 
control.  Of  this  whole  region,  moreover,  they  were  be 
yond  all  question  the  first  discoverers. 

The  American  title,  also,  was  at  first  in  the  main 
possessory,  though  we  claimed  under  the  Louisiana 
purchase,  and  also  insisted  upon  the  right  of  the  old 
colonies  to  stretch  across  the  continent  to  the  Western 
Ocean;  but  our  strongest  claim  in  1845  to  tne  region  in 
general  was  to  be  found  in  the  Spanish  treaty  of  1819, 
by  which  Spain  ceded  to  us  all  her  rights.  In  relation  to 
the  Columbia  River,  which  was  the  chief  bone  of  conten 
tion  for  many  years,  the  American  sea-captain,  Gray,  was 
not  its  discoverer,  but  was  in  1792  the  first  white  man  to 
enter  it,  and  he  named  it  after  his  vessel ;  while  the  gov 
ernmental  expedition  of  Lewis  and  Clark  in  1804-06 
traversed  for  the  first  time  the  whole  of  its  valley,  and 
the  great  merchant,  John  Jacob  Astor,  in  1811  founded 
the  first  permanent  settlement  there  at  Astoria,  as  well  as 
some  other  stations  higher  up  the  river.  To  the  broad 
statesmanship  of  Jefferson  we  owe  the  vastly  important 
expedition  of  Lewis  and  Clark,  and  he  in  turn  had  been 
largely  inspired  by  the  enthusiastic  young  American  ex 
plorer,  John  Ledyard. 


278       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

Astoria  was  captured  by  the  British  in  1813,  but  was 
handed  back  to  us  in  1818,  in  accordance  with  a  pro 
vision  in  the  treaty  of  peace  for  the  restitution  of  cap 
tured  places,  though  the  British  insisted  that  the  actual 
title  was  theirs.  In  this  same  year,  1818,  Rush  was 
engaged  in  London  in  negotiations  for  a  treaty  to  fix  the 
boundaries  between  the  British  possessions  and  ours,  but 
the  English  refused  to  make  any  agreement  as  to  the 
Northwest  coast,  which  did  not  at  least  give  them  equal 
rights  on  the  Columbia  River,  and  we  would  not  hear  of 
this. 

Our  proposition  was  to  make  the  parallel  of  49°  the 
dividing  line,  thus  extending  beyond  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  the  boundary  fixed  by  the  same  treaty  for  the  region 
east  of  the  mountains,  but  the  British  refused,  and  pro 
posed  that  the  region  between  45°  and  49°  should  remain 
open  to  trade  for  both  nations.  The  Americans,  of  course, 
declined  this  proposal,  but  it  led  to  the  Convention  of 
1818,  under  the  terms  of  which  the  whole  of  Oregon  was 
left  open  for  ten  years  to  citizens  of  both  nations  without 
prejudice  to  the  ulterior  claim  of  either  party  to  the  coun 
try.  Pending  these  ten  years,  efforts  were  made  to  settle 
the  question  of  title,  but  without  success,  and  in  1828  the 
agreement  of  1818  was  extended  indefinitely,  subject  to 
a  right  to  either  party  to  terminate  upon  a  year's  notice. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  century  the  trade  of  the  Ore 
gon  country  was  mainly  in  the  hands  of  the  Americans, 
and  we  controlled  the  Columbia  River.  Astor's  enter 
prise  had,  moreover,  increased  our  influence,  and  prom 
ised  to  do  so  still  further ;  but  from  the  capture  of  Astoria 
during  the  war,  and  entirely  uninfluenced  by  its  formal 
return  after  the  peace,  Astoria  or  Fort  George  and  the 
Columbia  River  in  general  were  in  the  control  of  the 
British,  and  they  even  had  some  stations  to  the  east  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  while  the  fur  trade  fell  into  their 
hands  and  remained  in  the  main  with  them  for  many  years. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  279 

The  powerful  Hudson's  Bay  Company  contributed,  of 
course,  to  this,  while  the  coup  de  grace  to  American 
chances  in  the  region  was  given  by  our  ever-growing 
tariff  laws.  We  could  not  trade  as  cheaply  as  the  Brit 
ish,  and  therefore  could  not  trade  at  all.  But  it  must 
always  be  remembered  that  this  British  possession  was 
subject  to  the  terms  of  the  treaty  of  1818,  which  care 
fully  kept  the  question  of  title  in  abeyance. 

Meanwhile,  both  countries  claimed  ill-defined  rights 
in  the  whole  region,  but  for  many  years  the  real  point  in 
contest  was  the  control  of  the  Columbia  River.  By  the 
chances  of  nature,  the  Columbia  was  the  only  navigable 
stream  on  the  Northwest  coast,  and  the  consequent  vital 
importance  of  securing  it  so  as  to  control  the  commerce 
of  the  region  was  well  understood  by  the  British.  Ac 
cordingly,  with  true  bull-dog  tenacity,  they  insisted  for 
years  upon  securing  at  least  equal  rights  in  it.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  why  the  English  proposed  the  joint 
occupation.  They  calculated  rightly  that  the  powerful 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  would  soon  secure  for  them  the 
actual  control,  and  the  chances  were  that  this  would 
ripen  in  time  into  a  possessory  title  of  such  strength  as 
to  annihilate  any  mere  American  claim  of  right. 

The  territory  in  dispute  extended  from  latitude  42° 
to  54°  40'  (i.e.,  the  southernmost  point  of  Prince  of 
Wales  Island,  down  to  which  the  Russian  title  was  con 
ceded  to  be  valid),  and  at  the  time  of  the  final  treaty  of 
1846  a  large  number  of  Americans  claimed  the  whole  as 
ours.  So  far  as  the  region  north  of  the  valley  of  the 
Columbia  is  concerned,  this  claim  was  based  upon  the 
Spanish  cession  of  1819,  but  it  seems  impossible  to  main 
tain  the  validity  of  the  Spanish  title  to  the  whole  of  Ore 
gon  at  that  date  in  face  of  the  fact  that  they  had  by  the 
Convention  of  1790  conceded  rights  in  the  territory  to 
the  English,  and  that  the  latter  had  then,  some  years 
before  the  treaty  of  1819,  founded  settlements  north  of 


280       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

latitude  49°,  which  they  held  for  many  years  without 
protest  from  any  one.  There  can  hardly  be  a  stronger 
title  than  actual  settlement  and  continued  possession 
under  color  of  right. 

Again,  down  to  after  1840,  we  had  few,  if  any,  set 
tlers  north  of  the  Columbia,  and  there  was  probably  at 
no  time  a  single  American  north  of  latitude  49°.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that  our  right  to  the  val 
ley  of  the  Columbia  River  was  based  on  an  immensely 
strong  title,  and  that  the  English  had  in  reality  no  basis 
for  the  claims  which  they  so  doggedly  asserted  there  for 
many  years.  The  whole  case  was  one  of  those  instances 
of  conflicting  rights  which  can  be  amicably  settled  only 
by  compromise,  and  the  proper  line  of  division  was  very 
plainly  pointed  out  by  the  history  of  the  region. 

By  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  in  1713,  it  was  provided  that 
commissioners  should  be  appointed  to  run  a  line  between 
the  English  and  French  possessions  in  North  America, 
and  it  was  almost  certainly  believed  by  the  statesmen  of 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  such  a  line 
was  agreed  upon  to  follow  the  forty-ninth  parallel  of  lati 
tude  "  indefinitely  to  the  west,"  but  no  direct  evidence 
of  this  fact  has  been  found,  and  the  debates  in  Congress 
in  1845-46  throw  great  doubt  upon  the  question.  The 
supporters  of  our  claims  to  54°  40'  insisted  upon  the 
production  of  the  best  evidence  of  the  line's  establish 
ment  from  the  proper  archives  of  the  governments  con 
cerned,  while  Benton  argued  quite  as  stoutly  on  the  other 
side  and  produced  a  mass  of  collateral  evidence  in  favor 
of  his  view. 

A  student  of  history,  he  had  doubtless  years  before 
convinced  himself  that  such  a  line  had  been  agreed  upon 
and  that  it  was  the  proper  one :  indeed,  he  had  in  the  past 
expressly  favored  settlement  on  the  parallel  of  49°,  and 
his  discussions  of  the  Oregon  question  had  been  generally 
directed  to  the  possession  of  the  Columbia  River,  while, 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  281 

so  far  as  I  have  found,  he  had  not  once  maintained  our 
right  to  all  of  Oregon. 

When,  therefore,  the  existence  of  the  line  of  49° 
under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  was  denied  upon  the  au 
thority  of  Greenhow's  book  on  Oregon,  Benton  was 
indignant  at  what  he  called  "  this  pie-poudre  insurrection 
— '  this  puddle-lane  rebellion' — against  the  truth  and 
majesty  of  history,"  and  argued  the  question  most  strenu 
ously;  but  it  is  to  be  observed  that  both  he  and  others 
were  careful  not  to  base  their  case  upon  the  point,  for  it 
can  hardly  be  that  an  agreement  of  that  early  date  could 
have  any  conclusive  effect  upon  a  question  as  to  land  on 
the  other  side  of  the  continent  the  existence  of  which  was 
then  hardly  more  than  known.  The  main  importance  of 
it  would  seem  to  be  as  cumulative  evidence  indicating  the 
proper  conventional  line,  and  in  this  sense  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  it  had  its  effect  upon  the  earlier  statesmen 
on  both  sides.  Thus  in  1806-07  a  treaty  was  drafted  fix 
ing  49°  as  the  boundary  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
and  though  this  treaty  never  became  effective,  yet  when 
some  of  the  contemporary  writings  leading  up  to  it  are 
examined,  they  afford  no  little  evidence  of  the  prevalence 
of  such  an  opinion  at  that  day. 

Further  evidence  to  the  same  point  is  found  in  the 
instructions  to  our  peace  plenipotentiaries  in  1814,  in 
which  they  were  reminded  by  Monroe  of  the  port  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and  were  told  "  on  no  pretext 
can  the  British  government  set  up  a  claim  to  territory 
south  of  the  northern  boundary  of  the  United  States.  It 
is  not  believed  they  have  any  claim  whatever  to  territory 
on  the  Pacific  Ocean.  You  will,  however,  be  careful, 
should  a  definition  of  boundary  be  attempted,  not  to 
countenance  in  any  manner  or  in  any  quarter,  a  preten 
sion  of  the  British  government  to  territory  south  of  that 
line."  When  it  is  remembered  that  this  was  written 
under  the  presidency  of  Madison,  who  had  been  Secre- 


282       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

tary  of  State  during  the  negotiation  of  the  unexecuted 
treaty  of  1807,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  parallel 
of  49°  was  again  referred  to.  And  the  evidence  becomes 
almost  conclusive  as  to  the  opinion  of  our  earlier  public 
men  when  we  find  John  Quincy  Adams  in  turn,  under 
the  presidency  of  Monroe,  holding  to  the  line  of  49°  as 
of  right  belonging  to  us. 

Writing  in  1818  to  our  representatives  in  the  nego 
tiation  for  boundaries  going  on  at  London,  Adams  re 
ferred  to  the  British  claim  of  title  to  the  settlement  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia,  and  then  went  on  to  speak 
of  "  the  49th  parallel  of  latitude,  south  of  which  they 
can  have  no  valid  claim  upon  this  continent."  And 
Richard  Rush,  who  was  concerned  in  two  of  our  earlier 
negotiations  upon  the  subject,  writes  in  words  that  the 
treaty  of  Utrecht  had  fixed  upon  the  line  of  49°.  The 
British  negotiators,  too,  had  in  more  than  one  instance, 
in  the  discussions  with  our  representatives,  written  in  re 
gard  to  that  line  under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht  in  a  way 
which  is  only  comprehensible  on  the  supposition  of  their 
belief  in  its  existence. 

Nor  is  this  all,  for  in  the  course  of  the  negotiations 
that  line  had  been  repeatedly  offered  by  us.  It  was 
formally  proposed  by  Gallatin  and  Rush  in  1818,  and 
again  by  Rush  in  1824,  after  having  first  offered  51°; 
while  in  1826-27  Gallatin  maintained  our  exclusive 
rights  from  42°  to  49°,  and  once  more  expressed  our 
willingness  to  settle  on  49°,  coupling  it  with  a  provision 
which  would  almost  certainly  have  given  the  British 
the  navigation  of  the  Columbia.  The  counter-offer  at 
this  time  was  to  follow  the  Columbia  River  from  the 
Pacific  to  the  parallel  of  49°  and  then  to  make  that  paral 
lel  the  boundary. 

One  other  nation  had  large  possessions  on  the  North 
west  coast  and  at  one  time  came  into  important  relations 
with  ourselves  and  the  English.  The  Russians  had 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  283 

operated  chiefly  very  far  to  the  north,  but  in  1821 
claimed  down  to  latitude  51°,  and  the  emperor  issued  his 
decree  declaring  the  ocean  of  the  region  to  be  a  close  sea. 
The  protest  of  ourselves  and  the  English  led  to  negotia 
tions  to  settle  the  rights  of  the  three  countries,  and  we 
proposed  a  tripartite  treaty  suggesting  once  more  49° 
(and  also  51°)  for  our  northern  boundary,  thence  to 
55°  (i.e.,  a  line  based  on  the  point  of  an  island  which 
was  later  found  in  reality  to  be  in  latitude  54°  40')  for 
the  English,  and  north  of  that  for  the  Russians ;  but  the 
English  declined  the  plan  of  a  joint  treaty,  and  hence  it 
was  that  in  1824  we  made  a  separate  treaty  with  Russia 
by  which  it  was  agreed  that  we  should  make  no  establish 
ment  north  and  the  Russians  none  south  of  54°  40'. 

Here  was  beyond  doubt  the  chief  origin  of  that  fa 
mous  line  which  we  came  to  claim  some  years  later  as 
our  northern  limit;  but,  wrhen  it  is  remembered  that  we 
had  in  this  very  negotiation  urged  a  tripartite  treaty 
fixing  our  northern  line  at  49°  and  making  54°  40'  the 
English  northern  line,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  54° 
40'  was  named,  not  as  the  northern  limit  of  the  territory 
which  Russia  either  conveyed  to  us  or  acknowledged  our 
title  to, — England  was  well  known  to  claim  it, — but  as 
the  line  south  of  which  the  Russians  made  no  claim; 
while  any  rights  we  might  have  in  it  under  the  Joint 
Occupation  Treaty  or  otherwise  were  left  open  to  us  by  the 
Russians  for  us  to  settle  with  the  British.  And  the  next 
year  (1825)  the  Russians  made  a  treaty  with  the  British 
by  which  the  line  of  demarcation  between  them  also  was 
started  at  the  sea  on  the  parallel  of  54°  40',  but  was  then 
run  in  such  a  way  as  left  to  the  Russians  a  long  strip 
parallel  to  the  coast,*  while  the  English  title  was  recog- 

*  This  is  the  provision  which  grew  later  into  a  dispute  between 
the  British,  on  the  one  side,  and  ourselves,  on  the  other,  as  the  suc 
cessors  to  the  Russian  title,  and  has  been  very  recently  settled. 


284       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

nized  to  a  vast  inland  territory  north  of  54°  40'  stretch 
ing  to  the  Arctic  Ocean. 

One  other  important  factor  in  the  history  of  Oregon 
must  be  mentioned.  In  the  winter  of  1840-4.1  John  C. 
Fremont  was  in  Washington  aiding  in  working  up  the 
results  of  Nicollet's  expedition  to  the  Upper  Missouri, 
and  it  was  but  natural  that  one  so  much  interested  in  the 
West  as  Benton  should  visit  their  office.  This  led  to 
some  intimacy,  and  Benton  referred  at  times  to  the  re 
gion  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  evidently  inspired 
Fremont  with  the  idea  of  becoming  an  explorer.  Other 
members  of  Congress  from  the  West  were  often  at  in 
terviews  at  the  Benton  house  and  other  places  where  the 
subject  was  discussed,  and  they  seem  to  have  felt  that 
the  time  had  arrived  for  action  in  regard  to  Oregon. 

The  plan  of  an  exploring  expedition  was  conceived 
and  a  small  appropriation  secured, — largely  through 
Benton's  efforts, — the  officially  declared  purpose  being  to 
explore  the  country  between  the  Missouri  River  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  while  in  reality  it  was  intended  by  its 
promoters  to  be  "  in  aid  of  and  auxiliary  to  the  Oregon 
emigration/'  Nicollet  was  to  have  commanded  this  ex 
pedition,  but  his  health  failed  and  Fremont  was  ap 
pointed  instead.  One  can  imagine  the  intense  interest 
of  Benton  in  this  undertaking,  which  promised  at  last 
in  the  spring  of  1842  to  crown  with  some  actual  success 
the  efforts  on  behalf  of  the  far  West  which  he  had  been 
engaged  in  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  And  to  this  cause 
of  interest  must  be  added  the  facts  that  the  commander  of 
the  romantic  undertaking  was  his  son-in-law,  and  that 
Benton's  son  Randolph,  a  boy  of  fourteen,  went  with  the 
expedition  as  far  as  Fort  Laramie.* 


*In  regard  to  the  early  history  of  Oregon  I  have  depended 
chiefly  upon  Hubert  H.  Bancroft's  Histories  of  the  Northwest  Coast 
and  of  Oregon,  with  aid  from  Sparks's  Life  of  John  Ledyard,  Chit- 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  285 

During  all  these  early  years  of  the  century  our  rights 
in  the  Oregon  country  were  on  many  occasions  the  sub 
ject  of  discussion  in  Congress.  While  Ben  ton  was  in 
Washington  in  1820,  kept  from  his  seat  by  the  struggle 
over  Missouri's  admission,  the  question  was  raised  for  the 
first  time  in  the  house  of  Representatives  by  Dr.  Floyd,  of 
Virginia.  Floyd  had  rooms  at  the  same  hotel  (Brown's) 
where  Benton  lived,  and  where  lived  also  two  of  Astor's 
party  to  Astoria,  and  became  convinced  of  the  value  of 
the  country  through  the  accounts  of  these  two  men  and 
inspired  also  by  Benton's  St.  Louis  Enquirer  articles  of 
1818-19,  which  he  read.*  In  consequence  of  this,  he 
took  the  subject  up  with  energy  and  urged  it  on  numerous 
occasions  down  to  1828.. 

There  was  then  a  lull  for  a  decade,  doubtless  owing 
to  the  press  of  other  stirring  matters,  and  not  until  1838 
did  another  recognized  champion  of  Oregon  appear  in 
Benton's  colleague  in  the  Senate  from  Missouri,  Dr. 
Linn.  But  from  that  date  until  1843  Linn,  in  turn,  was 
hammering  away  at  the  subject  with  motions  to  occupy, 
to  extend  our  laws  to  the  country  (as  the  British  had 
already  done),  to  build  forts,  to  grant  land  to  settlers,  and 
so  on;  but  he,  too,  like  Floyd,  merely  saw  one  of  his 
bills  get  through  one  House  in  1843,  to  be  lost  in  the 
other.  Linn  died  soon  after  this,  having  been  ridiculed 
as  well  as  cheered  on  as  the  champion  of  distant  and  un 
known  Oregon. 

Nor  was  Benton  by  any  means  a  silent  member  upon 
the  subject,  though  at  no  time  so  much  the  recog 
nized  champion  of  Oregon  as  Floyd  and  Linn  were. 
Probably  this  was  to  some  extent  for  the  reason  that 
Floyd  had  made  the  subject  his  in  the  House  before  Ben- 

tenden's    American    Fur-Trade   of   the   Far   West,   John    C.    Fre 
mont's  Memoirs  of  my  Life,  the  View,  vol.  i.,  pp.   13,  14,  50-54, 
109-111.    See  also  Richard  H.  Rush's  Court  at  London. 
*View,  i.,  pp.  13,  14. 


286       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ton  was  admitted  to  the  Senate,  while  later  Benton  had 
enough  special  policies  on  his  shoulders  to  render  it  inad 
visable  to  increase  his  load.  But  it  is  very  easy  to  see 
how  largely  both  Floyd's  and  Linn's  bills  and  speeches 
were  influenced  by  Benton's  early  articles,  and  he  fur 
nished,  moreover,  every  possible  aid  to  them  as  well  as 
introduced  measures  of  his  own  into  the  Senate.  Thus 
in  February,  1823,  he  introduced  a  resolution  looking  to 
an  appropriation  to  enable  the  President  to  take  and 
retain  possession  of  the  region. 

In  his  speech  he  said  that  he  knew  the  public  mind 
was  tranquil  upon  the  subject,  but  believed  this  arose,  not 
from  indifference  to  the  loss  of  the  Columbia  River,  but 
from  a  belief  that  our  title  to  it  was  indisputable.  He 
then  went  on  to  say  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  British 
disputed  our  rights  and  that  we  were  in  serious  danger 
of  losing  the  country,  for  they  were  in  undisputed  pos 
session,  and  when  the  Joint  Occupation  Treaty  expired 
in  1828  they  would  have  the  actual  possession,  and 
therefore  the  right  of  possession,  until  a  decision  upon 
the  title  should  be  made  adverse  to  them.  The  com 
mittee  to  which  this  resolution  was  referred  was  soon 
discharged  from  its  further  consideration  at  its  own 
request;  but  probably  Benton  had  expected  some  such 
result,  and  had  merely  aimed  to  arouse  public  interest. 

In  1828,  again,  when  the  convention  of  1818  was 
about  to  expire,  Benton  introduced  resolutions  in  secret 
session  against  the  joint  occupation,  and  "  that  it  is  ex 
pedient  for  the  government  of  the  United  States  to  treat 
with  his  Britannic  Majesty  .  .  .  upon  the  basis  of  ... 
the  establishment  of  the  49th  degree  of  north  latitude  as 
a  permanent  boundary  between  them  in  the  shortest  pos 
sible  time."  His  view  was — and  it  has  been  already 
shown  that  such  was  also  his  contention  in  his  articles  of 
1818-19 — that  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  was  domi 
neering  the  whole  region  in  the  interests  of  the  British, 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  287 

and  that  there  was  grave  risk  that  this  would  result  in 
our  losing  the  country;  but  he  still  spoke  to  ears  almost 
deaf,  and  his  resolutions  were  laid  upon  the  table  and 
the  agreement  of  1818  extended  indefinitely  by  a  treaty 
against  which  he  voted  with  only  six  other  Senators.* 

Finally — and  here  the  reader  will  again  see  conclu 
sive  evidence  as  to  the  region  which  Benton  always 
thought  belonged  to  us  in  Oregon — he  said  in  the  Sen 
ate  on  April  13,  1841:  "The  United  States  own  the 
Columbia  River,  its  mouth,  tributaries,  and  valley — 
everything  that  belongs  to  it  south  of  49  degrees — and 
that  is  about  everything  that  is  worth  having  upon  it," 
and  in  the  course  of  his  speech  he  referred  several  times 
to  the  line  of  49°  "  carried  indefinitely  to  the  west"  by 
the  treaty  of  Utrecht  as  being  the  true  line  of  division. 

When  Lord  Ashburton  came  out  to  this  country  in 
1842  on  his  peace  mission,  armed  with  authority  to  settle 
all  matters  in  dispute  between  the  two  nations,  it  was 
naturally  hoped  that  the  Oregon  question  would  at  last 
be  disposed  of.  The  agitation  of  the  subject  for  years  in 
and  out  of  Congress  was  having  its  effect,  and  popular 
interest  was  shown  in  a  thousand  ways  on  both  sides  of 
the  ocean,  while  the  American  immigration,  which 
hardly  began  until  1835,  became  extensive  in  1842  and 
then  grew  with  great  strides.  In  the  very  year  of  Ash- 
burton's  arrival  the  American  settlers  in  Oregon  began 
to  establish  a  government,  and  even  before  that  time  the 
danger  of  the  existing  state  of  affairs  was  very  evident. 


*  For  the  earlier  speeches  of  Benton  on  Oregon,  see  A.  of  C, 
i7th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  vol.  i.,  1821-22,  pp.  420-440.  Ibid.,  I7th  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  1822-23,  pp.  235,  246-251,  271.  C.  D.,  vol.  i.,  1824-25,  pp. 
699-713-  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  229.  Ibid., 
27th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp.  154,  234,  235,  238,  239.  Ibid.,  appendix,  pp. 
17-19,74-78,116,117.  Ibid.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  636,  637.  Ibid., 
appendix,  pp.  100-103.  The  Executive  Journal  of  the  Senate  for 
February  5,  1828  (see  also  February  i). 


288       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

Ashburton  had  instructions  from  his  government 
upon  the  subject,  but  early  in  the  conferences  between 
him  and  Webster  some  difficulty  was  found  in  dealing 
with  Oregon,  and  the  subject  was  not  mentioned  in  the 
Treaty  of  Washington.  The  trouble  was  that  the  Brit 
ish  still  wanted  to  come  down  to  the  Columbia  River, 
and  that  Webster,  who  was  willing  to  agree  to  this 
desire  on  their  part  under  some  conditions,  learned 
upon  sounding  certain  Senators  that  any  treaty  con 
taining  such  a  provision  would  meet  with  bitter  oppo 
sition.  Indeed,  not  very  long  after,  Webster  admitted, 
under  John  Quincy  Adams's  close  and  nagging  ques 
tioning,  that  such  had  been  the  British  wish,  and 
went  on  to  show  that  his  plan  was  to  make  the  conces 
sion  and  in  some  way  to  secure  from  Mexico  the  port  of 
San  Francisco  and  some  other  territory  for  us,  which 
Ashburton  had  said  they  would  not  object  to.  Doubt 
less  this  was  what  Webster  had  in  mind  as  the  great 
object  to  be  achieved  by  the  special  mission  to  England 
which  he  wanted  to  have  created  and  to  fill  himself. 

Benton  makes  all  this  clear  enough  when  he  tells  us 
that  at  an  early  stage  of  the  pending  negotiations  he 
and  Linn  were  approached  and  sounded  as  to  their  wil 
lingness  to  agree  to  a  "  conventional  line"  for  the  Oregon 
boundary,  and  adds  that  they  were  not  "  soft"  enough  for 
this,  and  refused  at  once  and  most  positively  to  have  any 
part  in  an  agreement  which  they  were  satisfied  meant  the 
partial  surrender  of  the  Columbia  River.* 

Popular  interest  in  regard  to  Oregon  was  fully 
aroused  by  this  time,  and  pamphlets  were  issued  in  num 
bers  both  here  and  in  England,  while  resolutions,  me 
morials,  and  petitions  began  to  pour  in  upon  Congress 


*  Adams's  Diary,  xi.,  pp.  344-347,  340.  Webster's  Private  Cor 
respondence,  ii.,  pp.  203,  204,  216.  Curtis's  Life  of  Webster,  ii.,  p.  173. 
View,  ii.,  429,  476. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  289 

from  many  of  the  border  States  calling  for  the  mainte 
nance  of  our  title  and  for  grants  of  land  to  the  settlers 
ready  to  go  there.  No  exact  definition  of  the  extent  of 
our  ownership  was,  as  a  rule,  attempted,  and  Tyler  was 
the  first  high  officer  to  insist  upon  the  famous  line  of  54° 
40'.  In  his  message  to  Congress  in  December,  1843,  ne 
said :  "  The  United  States  have  always  contended  that 
their  rights  appertain  to  the  entire  region  of  country 
lying  on  the  Pacific,  and  embraced  within  42°  and  54° 
40'  of  north  latitude." 

Such  was  undoubtedly  not  the  fact,  but  the  idea  took 
strongly  with  the  people,  and  in  1844  tne  Democratic 
National  Convention  resolved  "  that  our  title  to  the  whole 
of  Oregon  is  clear  and  unquestionable,  .  .  .  and  that 
the  reoccupation  of  Oregon,  and  the  reannexation  of 
Texas  at  the  earliest  practicable  period,  are  great  Ameri 
can  measures,  which  the  convention  recommends  to  the 
cordial  support  of  the  Democracy  of  the  Union." 

On  this  platform  Polk  was  elected,  and  there  cannot 
be  the  least  doubt  that  Oregon  up  to  54°  40'  was  meant ; 
indeed,  the  campaign  was  conducted  on  that  express 
basis  and  "  54  40  or  fight"  was  a  slogan  of  the  day. 
Polk  also,  in  his  inaugural  address,  on  March  4,  1845, 
gave  no  uncertain  sound  when  he  spoke  of  maintaining 
the  rights  of  the  United  States  to  the  territory  beyond 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  then  went  on :  "  Our  title  to  the 
country  of  the  Oregon  is  clear  and  unquestionable,  and 
already  are  our  people  preparing  to  perfect  that  title  by 
occupying  it  with  their  wives  and  children." 

Americans  can  afford  to  admit  in  the  light  of  history 
that  Lord  John  Russell  did  not  transgress  the  truth  when 
he  spoke  of  this  inaugural  as  "  a  blustering  announce 
ment,"  nor  can  we  wonder  that,  as  Benton  writes,  the 
voice  of  England  "  came  thundering  back"  in  indignant 
protest,  as  full  of  ominous  mutterings  of  war  as  was  our 
own,  while  a  leading  member  of  their  cabinet  said  in  the 

19 


290       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

upper  House,  "  We,  too,  my  lords,  have  rights  which  are 
clear  and  unquestionable;  and  those  rights,  with  the 
blessing  of  God  and  your  support,  we  are  fully  prepared 
to  maintain."  Such  an  outburst  as  Folk's  is  utterly  un 
justifiable  in  a  man  holding  high  and  responsible  station, 
unless  he  has  reached  a  final  and  positive  conclusion  to 
which  he  is  prepared  to  adhere,  war  or  no  war;  and  the 
worst  of  it  was  that,  almost  at  the  very  time  Polk  was 
uttering  these  words,  our  authorities  were  actually  nego 
tiating  with  the  British  upon  the  basis  of  our  willingness 
to  agree  on  the  line  of  49°.  If  the  new  President  did 
not  know  this  fact  at  the  hour  of  delivering  his  in 
augural,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  learned  it  from 
his  Secretary  of  State  a  few  hours  later. 

In  the  summer  of  1844  the  subject  had  been  taken 
up  between  our  then  Secretary  of  State  Calhoun  and  the 
English  minister  Richard  Pakenham.  and  the  former 
had  shown  plainly  enough  our  willingness  to  agree  upon 
the  parallel  of  49° ;  but  the  English  still  obstinately  ad 
hered  to  the  Columbia,  so  that  no  agreement  was  reached 
and  the  matter  went  over  to  Polk's  administration.  Ben- 
ton  says  it  was  their  hope  that  Pakenham  would  again 
open  the  subject;  but  that,  when  weeks  went  by  and  he 
said  not  a  word, — doubtless  because  of  the  rebuff  of  the 
inaugural, — they  became  embarrassed  at  the  delay,  while 
another  war  was  already  looming  up  ahead.  Some  time 
early  in  April,  Buchanan  sent  for  Benton,  whose  knowl 
edge  of  the  general  subject  was  well  known,  and  had  a 
conference  with  him  as  to  Oregon. 

Benton  said  at  once  that  in  his  opinion  the  parallel  of 
49°  was  the  true  line,  and  that  he  would  support  a  treaty 
based  on  it;  but  the  administration  was  too  strongly 
pledged  to  the  line  of  54°  40'  openly  to  make  the  change 
so  soon.  There  is,  however,  evidence  that  in  a  few 
months  the  members  had  modified  their  views,  for  on  July 
12  Buchanan  wrote  to  McLane,  our  minister  in  London, 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  291 

indicating  that  Polk  was  not  in  favor  of  a  war  "  f or  a 
comparatively  worthless  territory  north  of  49  degrees, 
which  his  predecessors  had  over  and  over  again  offered  to 
surrender  to  Great  Britain."  And  on  this  same  date  he 
opened  the  subject  with  Pakenham,  asserting  our  rights 
to  the  whole  region,  but  concluding  that,  as  the  Presi 
dent  felt  himself  to  some  extent  committed  by  the  acts 
of  his  predecessors,  he  was  willing  to  offer  as  a  com 
promise  to  settle  on  the  parallel  of  49°  and  to  make  free 
to  Great  Britain  any  ports  on  Vancouver's  Island  south 
of  that  parallel. 

Here  it  was  that  Pakenham,  in  turn,  made  one  of 
those  blunders  that  so  often  add  strength  to  the  cause 
of  an  opponent;  for,  without  consulting  his  government, 
he  wrote  back  with  bullying  insolence  that  he  trusted 
we  should  be  prepared  "  to  offer  some  further  proposal 
for  the  settlement  of  the  Oregon  question  more  consistent 
with  fairness  and  equity,  and  with  the  reasonable  ex 
pectations  of  the  British  government"  as  theretofore  pre 
sented  by  him.  To  this  Buchanan  answered,  on  August 
30,  arguing  our  case  once  more  at  length,  and  closed  by 
peremptorily  withdrawing  the  offer  of  49°.  When  our 
proposal  of  this  line  had  become  known  to  the  public, 
there  had  been  a  great  outburst  of  wrath  among  the 
claimants  of  the  whole  of  Oregon,  but  this  was  appeased 
by  the  withdrawal  of  the  offer  and  by  Buchanan's  able 
letter  in  defence  of  our  claims,  and  the  negotiations  were 
thus  at  a  stand-still  upon  grounds  which  the  American 
people  were  sure  to  approve. 

In  the  autumn  Benton  was  again  in  conference  with 
the  administration,  and  had  interviews  with  Polk  on 
October  24  and  December  6  *  by  appointment,  at  which 


*  Folk's  Diary.  A  typewritten  copy  of  this  valuable  and  inter 
esting  record,  made  under  the  direction  of  George  Bancroft,  is 
preserved  in  the  New  York  Public  Library. 


292       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

the  subject  of  Oregon  was  discussed.  He  and  Polk 
agreed  that  it  would  be  wise  to  terminate  the  joint  occu 
pation,  to  extend  our  jurisdiction  over  the  country,  to 
erect  block-houses  on  the  route  to  Oregon,  and  to  raise 
two  or  three  regiments  of  mounted  riflemen;  while 
both  doubted  the  legality  during  the  joint  occupation 
of  another  policy  much  urged  of  making  grants  of 
land  to  settlers.  Benton  approved  what  had  been  done, 
and  said  "  that  he  had  told  Mr.  Buchanan  last  spring 
that  he  would  support  the  settlement  of  the  question  at 
the  parallel  of  49°." 

Polk  added  that  since  the  rejection  of  the  offer  to 
compromise  on  49°  he  was  "  disposed  to  assert  our  ex 
treme  right  to  the  whole  country  .  .  .  [and  further 
was]  strongly  inclined  to  reaffirm  Mr.  Monroe's  doctrine 
— against  permitting  foreign  colonization,  at  least  so 
far  as  this  continent  was  concerned.  At  this  point,"  the 
Diary  continues,  "  without  denying  the  general  proposi 
tion,  Benton  remarked  that  Great  Britain  possessed  the 
same  kind  of  title  to  Fraser's  River,  by  discovery,  ex 
ploration,  and  settlement,  that  the  United  States  did  to 
the  Columbia." 

This  opinion  was  expressed  by  Benton  at  both  of 
these  interviews  as  well  as  at  later  ones,  he  even  bringing 
with  him  once  and  exhibiting  to  the  President  a  map 
published  by  Congress  on  which  the  parallel  of  49°  was 
marked  by  dotted  lines;  and  Polk  was  evidently  much 
struck  when  "  Colonel  Benton  in  the  course  of  the  con 
versation  stated  the  fact  that  the  British  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  had  near  twenty  forts  on  Fraser's  River." 

It  may  be  doubted  whether,  prior  to  this  interview, 
Polk  had  had  the  smallest  conception  that  the  British 
had  so  complete  physical  possession  of  a  part  of  the  re 
gion  in  dispute,  and  it  must  indeed  have  been  startling 
to  think  that  about  eight  months  before  he  had  calmly 
intimated  in  his  inaugural  the  intention  to  take  away 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  293 

from  them  what  they  had  so  long  held  and  occupied. 
Benton  was  evidently  looking  around  for  the  best  means 
of  leading  to  a  peaceful  settlement,  and  on  April  9,  1846, 
suggested  that  it  might  be  well  for  Polk,  as  soon  as  the 
notice  to  terminate  the  joint  occupation  was  given,  to 
renew  his  offer  to  compromise  on  the  line  of  49° ;  and 
on  May  3  (according  to  Polk)  even  went  so  far  as  to 
suggest  that  the  downward  navigation  of  the  Columbia 
might  be  conceded  to  the  British. 

When  Congress  had  met  on  December  i,  1845,  tne 
outlook  had  been  very  warlike.  Excited  debates  had 
begun  at  once  over  measures  to  terminate  the  joint  occu 
pation  and  to  increase  the  army  and  navy,  while  the  halls 
of  Congress  resounded  daily  to  the  echo  of  the  words 
"  inevitable  war."  And  to  these  indications  must  be 
added  the  fact  that  the  British  had  for  years  doggedly 
refused  to  hear  of  any  boundary  north  of  the  Columbia 
River,  and  had  as  late  as  1844  officially  notified  the  board 
of  management  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  that  Eng 
land  would  yield  nothing  in  Oregon  north  of  the  Colum 
bia,  and  that  the  company  should  govern  itself  accord 
ingly.*  Indeed,  Pakenham  had  even  sounded  Benton 
at  a  chance  interview  in  the  autumn  of  1845,  as  *°  our 
willingness  to  yield  the  navigation  of  the  Columbia  in 
exchange  for  their  yielding  to  us  that  of  the  St.  Law 
rence,  f 

Benton  does  not  seem  to  have  expected  war;  and 
though  early  in  the  session  he  advocated  in  the  Senate 
the  raising  of  a  new  regiment  of  mounted  riflemen, 
which  might  be  used  in  the  President's  discretion  to 
protect  the  emigrant  route  to  Oregon,  he  was  against  the 
proposed  large  increase  of  the  army  and  navy,  saying  that 
he  was  unwilling  to  "  declare  to  the  American  people  and 

*  H.  H.  Bancroft's  Oregon,  i.,  p.  447. 
t  Folk's  Diary  for  December  6,  1845. 


294       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

to  Europe,  that  we  had  an  idea  of  war  and  therefore 
deemed  it  necessary  to  make  warlike  preparations." 

But,  at  the  very  time  when  on  the  surface  affairs 
looked  so  warlike,  measures  were  in  reality  well  under 
way  which  easily  led  to  a  peaceful  solution  of  the  prob 
lem.  It  was  impossible  for  our  administration,  in  view 
of  the  threatening  state  of  affairs  with  Mexico,  to  want 
to  get  into  a  wrar  to  the  north ;  and  the  British  were  quite 
as  anxious  to  avoid  a  clash  at  arms  over  a  region  which 
its  emissaries  had  doubtless  reported  that  there  was  but 
little  chance  of  their  holding  against  us.  Accordingly, 
Sir  Robert  Peel  openly  expressed  his  disapproval  of 
Pakenham's  rejection  of  our  offer  of  49°,  and  some 
English  newspapers  began  to  favor  that  line,  while  more 
than  a  month  before  Congress  met,  Pakenham  had  again 
opened  the  subject  with  Buchanan  and  wanted  our  offer 
of  49°  reinstated. 

Buchanan  refused  to  do  this,  our  administration 
taking  the  position  that  the  next  step  must  be  made  by 
the  British,  and  the  consequence  was  that  the  negotiation 
was  soon,  in  effect,  transferred  to  London  and  taken  up 
between  McLane  and  Lord  Aberdeen.  The  latter  was 
from  the  start  quite  willing  to  submit  a  proposition  based 
on  the  parallel  of  49°  Avith  some  minor  modifications,  if 
he  could  know  that  it  would  be  acceptable;  and  after 
Buchanan  had  told  McLane  at  length  what  propositions 
he  might  intimate  to  Aberdeen  would  be  favorably  con 
sidered  by  Polk,  a  project  for  a  treaty  was  sent  to  Paken 
ham  on  May  19,  1846,  and  handed  by  him  to  Buchanan 
on  June  6. 

Its  terms — and  they  are  identical  with  the  final  treaty 
— are  well  known,  and  the  only  changes  of  any  moment 
from  Buchanan's  offer  of  July  12,  1845,  were  the  deflec 
tion  from  the  parallel  of  49°  down  the  middle  line  of  the 
Straits  of  Fuca,  so  as  to  give  the  whole  of  Vancouver 
Island  (instead  of  free  ports)  to  the  British,  and  the 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  295 

grant  of  rights  of  navigation  on  the  Columbia  River  to 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  British  subjects  trading 
with  it.  The  latter  provision  excited  a  good  deal  of 
American  criticism,  but  soon  turned  out  to  be  of  no 
moment  whatsoever.* 

How  were  the  public  and  the  President's  party  pre 
pared  to  accept  so  great  a  departure  by  the  administra 
tion  from  the  former  declarations  of  its  chief  and  from 
the  platform  on  which  he  had  been  elected?  The  task 
was  a  difficult  one,  nor  is  the  evidence  entirely  clear  as 
to  the  actions  of  Polk  in  the  matter,  but  I  think  there  can 
be  little  doubt  about  the  main  facts.  Benton  writes  that 
he  and  others  in  Congress  were  urged  by  Polk  and  mem 
bers  of  the  Cabinet  to  speak  in  favor  of  compromise  on 
the  line  of  49°,  and  this  is  almost  certainly  the  exact 
state  of  the  case. 

It  is  true  that  Polk's  Diary  nowhere  admits  that  its 
writer  had  changed  his  views,  and  indeed  is  persistently 
written  as  if  he  were  still  in  favor  of  maintaining  our 

*  In  regard  to  the  later  as  well  as  the  early  history  of  Oregon, 
H.  H.  Bancroft's  History  of  that  State  is  very  full.  The  negotiation 
of  the  treaty  of  1846  can  be  followed  in  the  diplomatic  correspond 
ence  to  be  found  in  the  Congressional  Debates  as  sent  with  various 
messages  of  the  President.  Further  very  important  correspondence 
upon  the  subject  is  printed  in  Curtis's  Life  of  Buchanan,  vol.  i.,  and 
important  details  of  Benton's  relation  thereto  are  to  be  found  in  the 
View,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  426-432,  468-478,  565,  566,  624,  625,  661-677.  Folk's 
Diary  has  also  been  largely  used  by  the  author,  the  text  sufficiently 
indicating  where  such  is  the  case.  McLaughlin's  Life  of  Cass  and 
Sir  Arthur  Gordon's  Life  of  Lord  Aberdeen  may  be  consulted  with 
advantage.  See  also  Schouler's  United  States,  iv.,  pp.  504-514,  and 
Burgess's  Middle  Period,  pp.  311-326.  The  well-known  legend  of 
Marcus  Whitman  (which  is  relied  upon  in  the  last-mentioned  work) 
is  examined  and  thoroughly  exploded  by  Professor  Edward  G. 
Bourne  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  vol.  iv.  (January,  1901 ) , 
p.  276,  etc.  See  also  discussion  of  this  paper  by  Principal  W.  I. 
Marshall,  of  Chicago,  in  Annual  Report  of  the  American  Historical 
Association  (1900),  vol.  i,  pp.  221-236. 


296       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

right  to  the  whole  country,  but  there  can,  in  my  opinion, 
be  no  doubt  that  he  was  in  reality  anxious  to  compromise 
and  to  get  out  of  the  difficulty.  No  Secretary  of  State 
could  possibly  have  written  the  series  of  letters  that 
Buchanan  was  for  months  sending  to  McLane  without 
his  chief's  knowledge  and  approval,  and  they  were  most 
distinctly  in  favor  of  the  line  of  49°. 

Again,  though  the  Diary  does  not  once  show  Polk 
actively  urging  members  to  speak,  yet  it  is  noteworthy 
that  Hay  wood  (a  personal  friend  of  Polk  and  one  of 
the  leading  Democrats  to  support  49°)  was  in  conference 
with  the  President  a  few  days  before  speaking  upon  the 
subject;  and,  though  this  was  not  so  clearly  the  case 
with  Benton,  yet  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  a  Presi 
dent  really  desiring  to  stand  out  for  54°  40'  would  have 
had  repeated  conferences  with  Benton  and  not  have 
urged  him  against  expressing  publicly  his  well-known 
and  oft-repeated  views  in  favor  of  the  parallel  of  49°. 
Nor  is  it  conceivable  that  a  real  54°  40'  man  would  have 
spoken  to  Benton  as  Polk  did  at  an  interview  on  April  9. 

On  this  occasion  Benton,  after  once  more  saying  that, 
in  his  opinion,  the  line  of  49°  was  the  proper  one,  had 
added  that,  if  Polk  thought  best,  he  would  make  a 
speech  on  the  basis  of  settling  on  49°,  or  he  would  do 
so  in  Executive  Session.  Polk  replied  that  he  could  not 
advise  him  to  speak  in  open  Senate,  because  any  speech 
so  made  was  addressed  to  Great  Britain  as  well  as  to  our 
selves,  and  harm  had  already  so  resulted;  but  he  added 
that,  if  Benton  chose  to  speak,  he  had  better  do  so  in 
Executive  Session  after  notice. 

It  is  equally  inconceivable  that  on  May  9 — at  a  time 
when  Benton's  general  views  had  been  already  given  to 
the  public — an  earnest  adherent  of  54°  40'  would  have 
entered  in  his  diary  that  Benton,  in  speaking  of  the  juris 
diction  bill,  "  told  me  he  would  urge  action  upon  it  and 
that  he  intended  to  discuss  the  whole  Oregon  subject.  I 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  297 

told  him  I  would  be  gratified,  if  he  would  take  charge  of 
the  bill  and  urge  its  passage."  Benton  was  by  that 
time  far  too  much  out  of  favor  with  the  supporters  of 
54°  40'  for  any  one  of  them  to  be  gratified  at  his  taking 
charge  of  any  bill  relating  to  Oregon. 

I  cannot,  therefore,  but  think  that  both  Polk  and  his 
Cabinet  were  secretly  doing  their  utmost  to  bring  about 
the  compromise  which  was  finally  made ;  and  that,  as  one 
means  of  preparing  the  public  for  this  event,  they  were  in 
reality  urging  their  friends  in  Congress  to  speak  and 
thus  prepare  the  public  gradually  to  accept  a  treaty  based 
on  the  parallel  of  49°.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in 
this  effort  Benton  was  one  of  their  main  supports,  and 
without  him  the  plan  might  well  have  miscarried. 

Not  only  was  he  universally  known  to  be  better  in 
formed  as  to  the  Oregon  question  than  any  other  public 
man,  so  that  his  voice  would  carry  great  weight  with 
the  public,  but  no  one  but  a  man  of  his  towering  force  of 
character  could  possibly  have  prevailed,  under  the  exist 
ing  circumstances,  against  the  noisy  and  blatant  eloquence 
of  the  "  Fifty-Four  Forties,"  led  by  such  able  debaters 
as  Cass,  Allen,  and  Hannegan.  Few  men  have  the  cour 
age  to  act  the  part  he  did  here.  The  fierce  struggle  in 
the  Senate  was  the  least  element  in  the  matter,  for  he  had 
to  incur  besides  the  gravest  risk  of  breaking  with  his 
party.  Already  his  course  in  regard  to  Texas  had  put 
him  somewhat  in  a  position  of  isolation,  but  he  did  not 
hesitate  for  a  moment  to  go  directly  against  the  strongly 
prevailing  sentiment  in  his  own  State  upon  the  subject 
of  Oregon  as  well. 

The  demand  for  the  whole  of  Oregon  was  popular  all 
over  the  West,  but  nowhere  more  so  than  in  Missouri, 
which  was  in  such  close  contact  with  the  region  and  was 
on  the  line  of  emigration.  It  is  said  *  that  at  a  mass- 

*  Personal  Recollections  of  Thomas  H.  Benton  by  Edward 
Dobyns  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society's  Collections  (MS.). 


298       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

meeting  in  St.  Louis,  after  a  speech  by  Benton  upon  the 
subject,  so  strong  was  the  feeling  that  a  resolution  con 
demning  his  course  was  introduced,  but  defeated;  and  a 
few  years  later,  in  referring  in  the  course  of  a  public 
speech  to  his  course  as  to  Oregon,  which  his  friends  had 
thought  so  dangerous  to  him,  he  said  "  he  knew  his  con 
stituents  had  been  wrought  up  to  54  40,  but  he  relied 
upon  their  equity  and  intelligence  to  give  him  a  fair 
hearing  and  a  safe  deliverance.  .  .  .  He  thanked  his 
constituents  for  approving  his  conduct  and  going  for 
their  future  good  instead  of  their  present  wishes."  * 

It  may  then,  I  think,  be  assumed  that  Polk  was  anx 
ious  to  have  the  way  for  the  coming  treaty  prepared  at 
once,  so  as  to  get  his  administration  out  of  the  difficulty 
into  which  it  had  fallen,  and  was  urging  Benton  and 
others  to  speak  fully  upon  the  subject  long  before  Ben- 
ton  did  so.  The  latter  finally  chose  his  own  time  most 
opportunely,  but  his  general  opinion  was  well  known 
throughout  the  session,  was  freely  given  in  private  to  any 
one  who  asked  it,  and  was  indicated  on  more  than  one 
occasion  in  the  Senate. 

His  first  speech  upon  the  general  subject  was  made 
on  February  19,  on  the  resolution  to  terminate  the  joint 
occupation,  and  was  short  and  strongly  in  favor  of  the 
general  course  pursued  by  the  administration.  Express 
ing  approval  of  the  refusal  to  arbitrate  and  of  the  various 
measures  suggested  in  the  message  to  protect  emigrants 
to  Oregon,  he  then  went  on  to  speak  of  Folk's  offer  of 
49°,  and  said :  "  It  has  had  a  good  effect  at  home  and 
abroad.  It  has  united  the  public  mind  at  home,  and  it 
has  quieted  the  ebullition  which  the  misapprehension  of 
the  inaugural  address  had  produced  in  Great  Britain.  It 
has  united  our  own  people  for  the  event,  be  it  what  it  may  ; 
and  it  has  produced  abroad  a  state  of  feeling  highly 

*  Niles's  Register,  June  5,  1847,  vol.  Ixxii.,  pp.  222,  223. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  299 

favorable  to  friendly  negotiation.  These  are  great  points 
gained  by  the  renewal  of  the  liberal  offer  of  compromise, 
and  I  rejoice  that  we  have  gained  them." 

And,  despite  the  prophecies  of  war  which  so  many 
were  daily  making,  he  said,  "  The  times  are  propitious 
to  negotiation;  the  state  of  the  question  is  favorable 
to  amicable  adjustment.  The  two  countries  are  not 
only  at  peace,  but  in  good  humor  with  each  other.  So 
far  as  I  can  see,  both  governments  are  for  peace.  The 
question  is  free  from  exasperation."  Finally,  he  advo 
cated  the  notice,  not  only  so  as  to  avoid  the  grave  risk 
of  collisions  in  the  region,  which  would  at  once  have 
aroused  angry  passions  on  both  sides  and  made  negotia 
tion  difficult,  but  also  on  the  ground  that  it  was  "  our 
right  and  duty  to  give  it;  that  Great  Britain  has  no 
right  to  take  offence  at  it;  and  that,  so  far  as  it  de 
pends  on  me,  it  shall  be  given  regardless  of  conse 
quences." 

Small  wonder  that  this  calm  and  dignified  speech  was 
a  subject  of  warm  commendation  from  many.  Its  quiet 
self-possession  and  evident  confidence  in  a  peaceful  set 
tlement  on  the  line  of  49°  were  in  striking  contrast  to  all 
the  turmoil  then  prevailing,  while  the  support  of  the 
administration  in  the  compromise  which  they  were  pre 
paring  must  have  been  a  boon  to  them  indeed.  One  feels 
that  at  last  the  turbid  waters  were  about  to  clear  and  the 
process  of  crystallization  to  begin. 

King  wrote  to  Buchanan  from  Paris :  "  The  speech  of 
Colonel  Benton  was  excellent,  and  proves  him  to  be  a 
statesman  indeed,"  while  the  President  and  Cabinet  evi 
dently  appreciated  the  value  of  his  services,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  copious  abuse  was  poured  out  upon  him 
and  others  who  were  aiding  the  administration,  by  the 
official  organ  at  Washington  "  and  the  five  hundred 
Democratic  papers  throughout  the  Union  which  followed 
its  lead.  ...  It  was  a  new  thing  under  the  sun,"  writes 


300       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Benton  in  the  "  View,"  "  to  see  the  Senator  daily  assailed 
in  the  government  papers  for  carrying  into  effect  the 
wishes  of  the  government — to  see  him  attacked  in  the 
morning  for  what  the  President  was  hurrying  him  to  do 
the  night  before.  His  course  was  equally  independent 
of  the  wishes  of  the  government  and  the  abuse  of  its 
papers.  He  had  studied  the  Oregon  question  for  twenty- 
five  years — had  made  up  his  mind  upon  it — and  should 
have  acted  according  to  his  convictions  without  regard 
to  support  or  resistance  from  any  quarter." 

It  must  forever  remain  a  gross  discredit  to  Buchanan 
and  Polk  that  they  were  actually  concerned  in  the  prep 
aration  of  such  editorial  articles  criticising  their  real 
friends  in  the  matter,  and  intended  to  deceive  the  public 
into  thinking  that  the  administration  had  been  in  favor 
of  standing  out  for  the  whole  of  Oregon.  If  there  is  any 
truth  at  all  in  Folk's  Diary,  Buchanan,  at  least,  was  eager 
and  even  impatient  from  an  early  day  to  compromise  the 
matter,  and  I  do  not  think  Polk  was  much  less  so,  despite 
his  pretences  to  himself  in  his  Diary ;  yet  in  the  succeed 
ing  autumn  Buchanan  prepared  a  series  of  articles  for  the 
Pennsylvanian — at  least  one  number  of  which  was  sub 
mitted  to  Polk  for  examination — maintaining  the  oppo 
site. 

The  pretence  was  that  the  Senate  "  would  not  main 
tain  the  President  in  his  just  and  wise  policy  of  asserting 
our  right  in  Oregon  up  to  the  parallel  of  54°  40',"  and 
it  was  charged  that  "  when  in  open  session  eminent  Sena 
tors  in  debate  disparaged  the  title  of  their  own  country 
and  advocated  the  claims  of  Great  Britain,  ...  the 
effect  could  not  fail  to  be  disastrous."  The  course  pur 
sued  by  Benton  and  Haywood  in  particular  was  con 
trasted  unfavorably  with  the  patriotic  efforts  of  Allen, 
Cass,  and  others,  despite  the  fact  that  the  author  of  the 
articles  was  the  very  same  man  who  had  written  in  a 
private  letter  to  a  friend  in  the  preceding  February  that 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  301 

"  Colonel  Benton's  conduct  and  speech  on  the  Oregon 
question  are  entitled  to  warm  commendation."  * 

Of  Benton  it  was  said  that  even  he  "  went  strongly 
for  the  parallel  of  49°.  He  became  entangled  in  the 
meshes  of  the  old  treaty  of  Utrecht,  which  had  been  con 
cluded  more  than  one  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago  be 
tween  Great  Britain  and  France;  and  having  without 
proper  precaution  chosen  this  position,  it  was  impossible 
either  to  persuade  or  drive  him  from  it.  Indeed  it  is  a 
striking  characteristic  of  this  great,  honest,  and  generally 
wise  statesman  that  when  once  he  gets  wrong  on  any 
subject  all  mankind  may  in  vain  attempt  to  set  him  right. 
.  .  .  The  colonel  carried  out  his  blunder  in  so  bold  a 
style  that  he  even  attempted  to  render  '  the  Fifty-Four- 
Forties/  as  he  termed  them,  ridiculous."  The  conclusion 
was  that  the  course  of  procedure  followed  by  Benton, 
Haywood,  and  the  Whigs  led  the  opponents  of  the  Presi 
dent's  policy,  as  well  as  the  public  in  England,  to  say, 
"  Look  to  the  Senate,"  and  that  the  consequence  soon  was 
that  nothing  could  be  done  by  the  "  patriotic  administra 
tion."  f 

As  Benton  came  to  know  in  some  way  that  Buchanan 
had  had  a  hand  in  the  preparation  of  these  articles,  it  is 
only  natural  that  we  shall  find  him  later  suspecting 
treachery  in  the  Cabinet  upon  other  subjects.  He  took 
exception  to  Polk  on  March  12,  1847,  in  regard  to  "  some 

*  Curtis's  Buchanan,  i.,  pp.  558,  559.  Letter  to  McLane,  February 
26,  1846.  The  date  is  printed  1845,  evidently  an  error. 

t  My  quotations  are  from  No.  8  and  No.  9  (the  last)  of  this 
series  of  articles,  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  Pennsylvanian  of 
November  19  and  26,  1846;  the  prior  numbers  are  printed  in  the 
issues  of  October  i,  3,  7,  15,  20,  23,  and  28.  There  is  no  positive 
proof  that  Buchanan  wrote  or  Polk  saw  all  the  numbers,  but  Folk's 
Diary  of  October  7,  1846,  shows  that  Buchanan  was  "  preparing"  a 
series  of  articles  upon  the  subject  and  had  left  No.  4  with  Polk  for 
examination. 


302       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

number  which  Mr.  Buchanan  had  written  for  the  Penn- 
sylvanian  newspaper  last  fall  on  the  Oregon  question," 
but  Polk  did  not  apparently  mention  his  own  connection 
with  the  matter.  Benton  also  complained  to  Forney  (the 
editor  of  the  Pennsylvanian)  of  the  articles,  and  the  lat 
ter  came  to  Washington  so  as  to  meet  any  attack;  but 
Benton  let  the  matter  drop,  saying  to  Forney,  "  I  did  not 
proceed,  because  I  knew  you  assumed  the  responsibility 
that  belonged  to  another."  * 

The  next  friend  of  the  administration  who  came  for 
ward  to  prepare  the  public  for  the  coming  event  was 
Haywood,  of  North  Carolina,  and  he  did  indeed  go  on  a 
forlorn  hope.  Whether  of  his  own  motion  or  not,  he 
very  unwisely  took  up  the  impossible  task  of  proving 
that  Polk  was  in  no  way  pledged  to  54°  40',  and  there 
was  at  once  a  furious  onslaught  upon  him  by  Hannegan 
and  others.  He  bore  up  well  under  the  ordeal  and  was 
aided  by  the  Whig  Reverdy  Johnson,  but  the  odds  were 
hopelessly  against  him  in  defence  of  such  a  palpably  false 
contention. 

Benton  writes  f  that  he  "  knew  that  Mr.  Haywood 
spoke  with  a  knowledge  of  the  President's  sentiments, 
and  according  to  his  wishes,  and  to  prepare  the  country 
for  a  treaty  upon  49°.  He  knew  this,  because  he  was  in 
consultation  with  the  President  and  was  to  speak  for  the 
same  purpose,  and  was  urged  to  speak  immediately  in 
consequence  of  the  attempt  to  crush  Mr.  Haywood;" 
yet,  a  few  days  after  Haywood's  speech,  the  President 
intimated  to  several  leading  advocates  of  54°  40'  that 
he  had  little  or  no  knowledge  of  what  Haywood  had 
said.  It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  such  a  scene  as 
there  was  on  that  occasion  in  the  Senate  did  not  occur 
without  the  President's  knowing  all  its  main  outlines. 


*John  W.  Forney's  Anecdotes  of  Public  Men,  i.,  p.  22. 
fView,  ii.,  p.  666,  and  see  p.  663. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  303 

Benton  did  not  yet  make  his  main  speech,  but  on  the 
ist  of  April,  in  the  course  of  a  discussion  with  Cass  in 
regard  to  the  line  of  49°  under  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  he 
took  the  opportunity  to  show  once  more  both  what  his 
general  opinion  was  and  that  he  fully  expected  to  sup 
port  the  plans  of  the  administration : 

"  I  have,"  he  said,  "  made  no  speech  upon  Oregon,  and  will 
make  none  at  this  time.  And  here  I  will  answer  publicly  a  question 
which  is  often  put  to  me  privately,  '  Why  don't  you  speak  f  An 
swer  :  I  profess  to  be  a  friend  to  this  administration,  and  mean  to 
keep  myself  in  a  position  to  act  according  to  my  professions.  I  do 
not  mean  to  run  ahead  of  the  administration  in  its  appropriate 
sphere ;  I  do  not  mean  to  take  negotiation  out  of  its  hands ;  I  do  not 
mean  to  undertake  to  lead  it,  or  drive  it,  to  come  in  conflict  with 
it,  or  to  denounce  it,  with  or  without  hypothesis,  or  before  or  after 
the  fact.  The  President's  position  is  arduous;  his  responsibilities 
to  his  God  and  his  country  are  great.  I  believe  he  is  doing  his 
best  to  reconcile  and  accomplish  together  the  great  objects  of  the 
peace,  the  honor,  and  the  rights  of  the  country ;  and  believing  this, 
I  shall  hold  myself  in  a  position  to  view  his  acts  with  perfect  candor, 
and  with  the  strongest  disposition  to  support  him  in  what  he  may 
find  it  necessary  to  do." 

It  was  not  until  nearly  the  end  of  May  that  Benton 
made  his  chief  speech  upon  the  question,  using  for  the 
purpose  a  bill  then  pending  "  to  extend  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  United  States  over  the  territory  west  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains."  It  may  probably  be  assumed  that  he  knew 
at  this  time  from  his  relations  with  Polk  and  Buchanan 
that  a  proposal  for  settlement  on  the  line  of  49°  was 
about  to  come  from  the  British,  and  his  speech,  which 
occupied  very  nearly  the  whole  of  three  days'  sessions, 
was  directed  in  the  main  to  prove  the  propriety  of  set 
tlement  on  that  line. 

He  was  by  no  means  unconscious  that  he  was  playing 
an  unpopular  part,  and  began  by  saying,  "  It  is  my  un 
gracious  task  ...  to  commence  by  exposing  error  at 
home  and  endeavoring  to  clear  up  some  great  mistakes 


304       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

under  which  the  public  mind  has  labored."  He  then 
went  on  to  object  that  the  pending  bill  did  not  define 
the  limits  of  what  we  claimed  as  our  own,  but  left  to 
our  agents 

"the  solution  of  questions  which  we  find  too  hard  for  ourselves. 
This  indefinite  extension  of  authority,  in  a  case  which  requires  the 
utmost  precision,  forces  me  to  speak  and  to  give  my  opinion  of  the 
true  extent  of  our  territories  beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains.  I  have 
delayed  doing  this  during  the  whole  session,  not  from  any  desire 
to  conceal  my  opinions  (which  in  fact  were  told  to  all  that  asked 
them),  but  because  I  thought  it  the  business  of  negotiation,  not  of 
legislation,  to  settle  those  boundaries.  I  waited  for  negotiation,  but 
negotiation  lags  while  events  go  forward,  and  now  we  are  in  the 
process  of  acting  upon  measures  upon  the  adoption  of  which  it  may 
no  longer  be  in  the  power  either  of  negotiation  or  of  legislation  to 
control  the  events  to  which  they  may  give  rise." 

On  the  question  of  the  history  of  the  country,  it  is 
wonderful  to  see  how  nearly  his  account  contains  all  the 
main  facts  later  put  together  from  a  thousand  sources 
with  such  painstaking  industry  by  the  historian  of  the 
Pacific  coast.  The  whole  thread  of  the  story  with  its 
complicated  historical  and  geographical  relations  and  the 
many  conflicting  rights  of  title  growing  out  of  it  was  at 
his  fingers'  ends  and  was  marshalled  in  a  way  that  must 
have  carried  conviction  to  many  who  had  theretofore 
been  in  doubt. 

He  especially  dwelt  upon  the  status  of  the  British  set 
tlements  on  Frazer  River,  and  in  accordance  with  a 
manner  of  which  he  was  always  fond,  exhibited  a  large 
map  and  pointed  out  the  line  of  that  river  well  below  the 
parallel  of  54°  40'  and  with  a  string  of  British  posts  on 
it  from  head  to  mouth  and  "  clusters  of  British  names, 
imposed  by  the  British,  visible  everywhere,"  and  then 
said  that  an  effort  on  our  part  to  take  those  British 
establishments  "  would  be  followed  by  war  as  quickly  and 
as  justly  as  an  attempt  to  take  their  towns  in  Canada." 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  305 

This  point  he  pressed  home  on  Cass  in  particular, — 
the  only  man  in  the  Senate  who  made  any  real  effort  to 
discuss  the  question  of  title  with  him, — and  called  upon 
him  to  state  our  title  to  that  district,  but  no  answer  was 
nor  in  reality  could  be  made. 

On  the  last  day  of  his  speech  he  took  up  the  ques 
tion  of  the  value  of  the  Columbia  country,  and  urged — 
as  he  had  in  his  earlier  days  as  a  lawyer  in  St.  Louis — 
its  vast  importance  to  us  as  constituting  "  the  American 
road  to  India"  and  offering  us  the  control  of  the  com 
merce  of  the  East.  His  treatment  of  this  subject  also 
was  at  great  length  and  will  amply  repay  reading  in  full, 
but  it  is  only  possible  to  reproduce  here  the  following 
extracts  as  samples  of  his  breadth  of  view  and  broad 
comprehension  of  human  affairs,  and  possibly  as  evi 
dencing  some  forecast  of  coming  events  and  tendencies 
in  Asia  and  particularly  in  Japan  in  the  years  which  have 
elapsed  since  his  death : 

"  The  value  of  the  country — I  mean  the  Columbia  River  and 
its  valley  (I  must  repeat  the  limitation  every  time,  lest  I  be  carried 
up  to  54°  40') — has  been  questioned  on  this  floor  and  elsewhere.  It 
has  been  supposed  to  be  of  little  value — hardly  worth  the  possession, 
much  less  the  acquisition ;  and  treated  rather  as  a  burden  to  be  got 
rid  of  than  as  a  benefit  to  be  preserved.  This  is  a  great  error,  and 
one  that  only  prevails  on  this  side  of  the  water.  The  British  know 
better;  and  if  they  held  the  tithe  of  our  title,  they  would  fight  the 
world  for  what  we  depreciate.  It  is  not  a  worthless  country,  but  one 
of  immense  value,  and  that  under  many  aspects,  and  will  be  occupied 
by  others,  to  our  injury  and  annoyance,  if  not  by  ourselves  for  our 
own  benefit  and  protection.  Forty  years  ago  it  was  written  by 
Humboldt,  that  the  banks  of  the  Columbia  presented  the  only  situa 
tion  on  the  northwest  coast  of  America  fit  for  the  residence  of  a 
civilized  people.  Experience  has  confirmed  the  truth  of  this  wise 
remark.  All  the  rest  of  the  coast,  from  the  Straits  of  Fuca  out 
to  New  Archangel  (and  nothing  but  a  fur-trading  post  there), 
remains  a  vacant  waste,  abandoned  since  the  quarrel  of  Nootka 
Sound,  and  become  the  derelict  of  nations.  The  Columbia  only 
invites  a  possessor ;  and  for  that  possession,  sagacious  British 
diplomacy  has  been  long  weaving  its  web.  It  is  not  a  worthless 

20 


306       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

possession;  but  valuable  under  many  and  large  aspects;  to  the 
consideration  of  some  of  which  I  now  proceed. 

"  It  is  valuable,  both  as  a  country  to  be  inhabited  and  as  a  posi 
tion  to  be  held  and  defended.  I  speak  of  it,  first,  as  a  position  com 
manding  the  North  Pacific  Ocean  and  overlooking  the  eastern  coast 
of  Asia.  The  North  Pacific  is  a  rich  sea,  and  is  already  the  seat 
of  a  great  commerce;  British,  French,  American,  Russian,  and  ships 
of  other  nations,  frequent  it.  Our  whaling-ships  cover  it ;  our  ships- 
of-war  go  there  to  protect  our  interest,  and,  great  as  that  interest 
now  is,  it  is  only  the  beginning.  Futurity  will  develop  an  im 
mense,  and  various,  commerce  on  that  sea,  of  which  the  far  greater 
part  will  be  American.  That  commerce,  neither  in  the  merchant- 
ships  which  carry  it  on  nor  in  the  military  marine  which  protects 
it,  can  find  a  port  to  call  its  own  within  twenty  thousand  miles  of 
the  field  of  its  operations.  The  double  length  of  the  two  Americas 
has  to  be  run — a  stormy  and  tempestuous  cape  to  be  doubled — to 
find  itself  in  a  port  of  its  own  country;  while  here  i.es  one  in  the 
very  edge  of  its  field,  ours  by  right,  ready  for  use,  and  ample  for 
every  purpose  of  refuge  and  repair,  protection  and  domination.  Can 
we  turn  our  back  upon  it?  and,  in  turning  the  back,  deliver  it  up  to 
the  British?  Insane  and  suicidal  would  be  the  fatal  act!  ... 

"  Agriculturally  the  value  of  the  country  is  great ;  and,  to 
understand  it  in  all  its  extent,  this  large  country  should  be  contem 
plated  under  its  different  divisions — the  threefold  natural  geographi 
cal  divisions  under  which  it  presents  itself :  the  maritime,  the  middle, 
and  the  mountain  districts. 

"  The  maritime  region — the  fertile  part  of  it — is  the  long  valley 
between  the  Cascade  and  the  Coast  ranges  of  mountains  extending 
from  the  head  of  the  Wah-lah-math,*  near  the  latitude  of  42°,  to  the 
Straits  of  Fuca,  near  latitude  49°.  In  this  valley  lies  the  rich  tide 
water  region  of  the  Columbia,  with  the  Wah-lah-math  River  on  the 
south,  and  the  Coweliske,f  and  the  Olympic  district,  on  the  north. 
It  is  a  valley  of  near  five  hundred  miles  long,  north  and  south, 
and  above  one  hundred  wide ;  rich  in  soil,  grass,  and  timber — 
sufficient  of  itself  to  constitute  a  respectable  State,  and  now  the 
seat  of  the  British  commercial  and  military  post  of  Vancouver  and 
of  their  great  farming  establishment  of  Nisqually. 

"  The  middle  district,  from  the  Cascade  range  to  near  the  base 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  is  the  region  called  desert,  and  which  in 
the  imaginations  of  many  has  given  character  to  the  whole  country. 
In  some  respects  it  is  a  desert — barren  of  wood — sprinkled  with 

*  Willamette.  t  Cowlitz. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  307 

sandy  plains — melancholy  under  the  sombre  aspect  of  the  gloomy 
artemisia — and  desolate  from  volcanic  rocks,  through  the  chasms  of 
which  plunge  the  headlong  streams.  But  this  desert  has  its  redeem 
ing  points — much  water — grass — many  oases — mountains  capped  with 
snow,  to  refresh  the  air,  the  land,  and  the  eye — blooming  valleys — a 
clear  sky,  pure  air,  and  a  supreme  salubrity.  It  is  the  home  of 
the  horse !  found  there  wild  in  all  the  perfection  of  his  first  nature 
— beautiful  and  fleet — fiery  and  docile — patient,  enduring,  and 
affectionate.  .  .  . 

"  The  mountain  division  has  its  own  peculiar  features,  and  many 
of  them  as  useful  as  picturesque.  At  the  base  of  the  mountains,  a 
long,  broad,  and  high  bench  is  seen — three  hundred  miles  long,  fifty 
miles  wide — the  deposite  of  abraded  mountains  of  snow  and  verdure 
through  thousands  of  years.  .  .  . 

"  Other  and  smaller  benches  of  the  same  character  are  fre 
quently  seen,  inviting  the  farmer  to  make  his  healthy  habitation  and 
fertile  field  upon  it. 

"  Entering  the  gorges  of  the  mountains,  and  a  succession  of 
everything  is  found  which  is  seen  in  the  alpine  regions  of  Switzer 
land,  glaciers  only  excepted.  Magnificent  mountain  scenery — lakes — 
grassy  valleys — snow-capped  mountains — clear  streams  and  foun 
tains — coves  and  parks — hot  and  warm  springs — mineral  waters  of 
many  varieties — salt  in  the  solid  and  fluid  state — salt  lakes,  and 
even  hot  salt  springs — wood,  coal,  and  iron.  Such  are  the  Rocky 
Mountains  in  the  long  and  broad  section  from  the  head  of  the  Rio 
Grande  del  Norte,  of  the  sunny  South,  to  the  head  of  the  Athabasca, 
of  the  Frozen  Ocean.  This  ample,  rich  and  elevated  mountain 
region  is  deemed,  by  those  unacquainted  with  the  Farthest  West, 
to  be,  and  to  be  forever,  the  desolate  and  frozen  dominion  of  the  wild 
beast  and  the  savage.  On  the  contrary,  I  view  it  as  the  future  seat 
of  population  and  power,  where  man  is  to  appear  in  all  the  moral, 
intellectual,  and  physical  endowments  which  ennoble  the  mountain 
race,  and  where  liberty,  independence,  and  love  of  virtue,  are  to  make 
their  last  stand  on  earth. 

"  Thus,  agriculturally,  and  as  producing  the  means  of  human 
subsistence — as  sustaining  a  population,  and  supplying  the  elements 
of  wealth  and  power,  as  derived  from  the  surface  and  the  bowels 
of  the  earth — I  look  upon  the  region  drained  by  the  waters  of  the 
Columbia  as  one  of  the  valuable  divisions  of  the  North  American 
continent.  .  .  . 

"  Commercially,  the  advantages  of  Oregon  will  be  great — far 
greater  than  any  equal  portion  of  the  Atlantic  States.  The  Eastern 
Asiatics,  who  will  be  their  chief  customers,  are  more  numerous  than 


3o8       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

our  customers  in  Western  Europe — more  profitable  to  trade  with, 
and  less  dangerous  to  quarrel  with.  Their  articles  of  commerce  are 
richer  than  those  of  Europe ;  they  want  what  the  Oregons  will  have 
to  spare— bread  and  provisions-— and  have  no  systems  of  policy  to 
prevent  them  from  purchasing  these  necessaries  of  life  from  those 
who  can  supply  them.  The  sea  which  washes  their  shores  is  every 
way  a  better  sea  than  the  Atlantic — richer  in  its  whale  and  other 
fisheries — in  the  fur  regions  which  enclose  it  to  the  north — more 
fortunate  in  the  tranquillity  of  its  character,  in  its  freedom  from 
storms,  gulf-streams,  and  icebergs— in  its  perfect  adaptation  to  steam 
navigation — in  its  intermediate  or  half-way  islands,  and  its  myriad 
of  rich  islands  on  its  further  side, — in  its  freedom  from  maritime 
powers  on  its  coasts,  except  the  American,  which  is  to  grow  up 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia.  As  a  people  to  trade  with — as  a  sea 
to  navigate — the  Mongolian  race  of  Eastern  Asia,  and  the  North 
Pacific  Ocean,  are  far  preferable  to  the  Europeans  and  the  At 
lantic.  .  .  . 

"  I  say  to  my  fellow-citizens :  Through  the  valley  of  the  Colum 
bia,  lies  the  North  American  road  to  India.  Twenty-eight  years  ago 
I  wrote  something  on  this  head,  and  published  it.  A  quarter  of  a 
century  of  experience  and  observation  has  given  me  nothing  to  de 
tract  from  what  I  then  wrote — nothing  to  add,  except  as  derived 
from  the  progress  of  the  arts,  and  especially  omnipotent  steam. 

"  The  trade  of  the  East  has  always  been  the  richest  jewel  in  the 
.diadem  of  commerce.  All  nations,  in  all  ages,  have  sought  it;  and 
those  which  obtained  it,  or  even  a  share  of  it,  attained  the  highest 
degree  of  opulence,  refinement,  and  power.  The  routes  through 
which  it  flowed  fertilized  deserts,  and  built  up  cities  and  kingdoms 
amidst  the  desolation  of  rocks  and  sands.  Phenicia,  Egypt,  Persia 
were  among  the  ancient  thoroughfares  of  this  commerce ;  Constan 
tinople  and  Alexandria  among  its  modern  channels ;  and  Venice  and 
Genoa  in  the  south,  and  Bruges  and  Antwerp  in  the  north,  the  means 
of  its  distribution  over  Europe.  All  grew  rich  and  powerful  upon  it ; 
and  with  wealth  and  power  came  civilization  and  refinement.  The 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  became  the  recent  route,  with  wealth  to  its  dis 
coverers,  the  Portuguese,  and  to  all  their  rivals  and  followers — the 
Dutch,  English,  French,  and  others.  .  .  . 

"The  effect  of  the  arrival  of  the  Caucasian,  or  white  race,  on 
the  western  coast  of  America,  opposite  the  eastern  coast  of  Asia, 
remains  to  be  mentioned  among  the  benefits  which  the  settlement  of 
the  Columbia  will  produce;  and  that  a  benefit,  not  local  to  us,  but 
general  and  universal  to  the  human  race.  Since  the  dispersion  of 
man  upon  earth,  I  know  of  no  human  event,  past  or  to  come,  which 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  309 

promises  a  greater  and  more  beneficent  change  upon  earth  than  the 
arrival  of  the  van  of  the  Caucasian  race  (the  Celtic-Anglo-Saxon 
division)  upon  the  border  of  the  sea  which  washes  the  shore  of  the 
eastern  Asia.  The  Mongolian,  or  yellow  race,  is  there,  four  hundred 
millions  in  number,  spreading  almost  to  Europe,  a  race  once  the 
foremost  of  the  human  family  in  the  arts  of  civilization,  but  torpid 
and  stationary  for  thousands  of  years.  It  is  a  race  far  above  the 
Ethiopian,  or  black — above  the  Malay,  or  brown  (if  we  must  admit 
five  races), — and  above  the  American  Indian,  or  red;  it  is  a  race  far 
above  all  these,  but  still  far  below  the  white;  and,  like  all  the  rest, 
must  receive  an  impression  from  the  superior  race  whenever  they 
come  in  contact.  It  would  seem  that  the  white  race  alone  received 
the  divine  command,  to  subdue  and  replenish  the  earth !  for  it  is 
the  only  race  that  has  obeyed  it — the  only  one  that  hunts  out  new 
and  distant  lands,  and  even  a  New  World,  to  subdue  and  replenish. 
Starting  from  western  Asia,  taking  Europe  for  their  field,  and  the 
sun  for  their  guide,  and  leaving  the  Mongolians  behind,  they  arrived, 
after  many  ages,  on  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  which  they  lit  up 
with  the  lights  of  science  and  religion,  and  adorned  with  the  useful 
and  the  elegant  arts.  Three  and  a  half  centuries  ago  this  race,  in 
obedience  to  the  great  command,  arrived  in  the  New  World,  and 
found  new  lands  to  subdue  and  replenish.  For  a  long  time  it  was 
confined  to  the  border  of  the  new  field  (I  now  mean  the  Celtic- 
Anglo-Saxon  division)  ;  and  even  fourscore  years  ago  the  philo 
sophic  Burke  was  considered  a  rash  man  because  he  said  the  English 
colonists  would  top  the  Alleganies,  and  descend  into  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  occupy  without  parchment  if  the  Crown  refused  to 
make  grants  of  land.  What  was  considered  a  rash  declaration  eighty 
years  ago  is  old  history  in  our  young  country,  at  this  day.  Thirty 
years  ago  I  said  the  same  thing  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the 
Columbia :  it  was  ridiculed  then ;  it  is  becoming  history  to-day. 
The  venerable  Mr.  Macon  has  often  told  me  that  he  remembered 
a  line  low  down  in  North  Carolina,  fixed  by  a  royal  governor  as  a 
boundary  between  the  whites  and  the  Indians ;  where  is  that  bound 
ary  now?  The  van  of  the  Caucasian  race  now  top  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  and  spread  down  to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific.  In  a  few 
years  a  great  population  will  grow  up  there,  luminous  with  the 
accumulated  lights  of  European  and  American  civilization.  Their 
presence  in  such  a  position  cannot  be  without  its  influence  upon 
eastern  Asia.  The  sun  of  civilization  must  shine  across  the  sea : 
socially  and  commercially,  the  van  of  the  Caucasians,  and  the  rear 
of  the  Mongolians,  must  intermix.  They  must  talk  together,  and 
trade  together,  and  marry  together.  Commerce  is  a  great  civilizer — • 


3io       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

social  intercourse  as  great — and  marriage  greater.  The  white  and 
yellow  races  can  marry  together,  as  well  as  eat  and  trade  together. 
Moral  and  intellectual  superiority  will  do  the  rest :  the  white  race 
will  take  the  ascendant,  elevating  what  is  susceptible  of  improve 
ment — wearing  out  what  is  not.  The  red  race  has  disappeared  from 
the  Atlantic  coast :  the  tribes  that  resisted  civilization  met  extinc 
tion.  This  is  a  cause  of  lamentation  with  many.  For  my  part,  I 
cannot  murmur  at  what  seems  to  be  the  effect  of  divine  law.  I 
cannot  repine  that  this  Capitol  has  replaced  the  wigwam — this  Chris 
tian  people  replaced  the  savages — white  matrons  the  red  squaws — 
and  that  such  men  as  Washington,  Franklin,  and  Jefferson  have 
taken  the  place  of  Powhattan,  Opechonecanough,  and  other  red 
men,  however  respectable  they  may  have  been  as  savages.  Civiliza 
tion,  or  extinction,  has  been  the  fate  of  all  people  who  have  found 
themselves  in  the  track  of  the  advancing  whites,  and  civilization, 
always  the  preference  of  the  whites,  has  been  pressed  as  an  object, 
while  extinction  has  followed  as  a  consequence  of  its  resistance.  The 
black  and  the  red  races  have  often  felt  their  ameliorating  influence. 
The  yellow  race,  next  to  themselves  in  the  scale  of  mental  and 
moral  excellence,  and  in  the  beauty  of  form,  once  their  superiors  in 
the  useful  and  elegant  arts,  and  in  learning,  and  still  respectable 
though  stationary;  this  race  cannot  fail  to  receive  a  new  impulse 
from  the  approach  of  the  whites,  improved  so  much  since  so  many 
ages  ago  they  left  the  western  borders  of  Asia.  The  apparition  of 
the  van  of  the  Caucasian  race,  rising  upon  them  in  the  east  after 
having  left  them  on  the  west,  and  after  having  completed  the  cir 
cumnavigation  of  the  globe,  must  wake  up  and  reanimate  the  torpid 
body  of  old  Asia.  Our  position  and  policy  will  commend  us  to  their 
hospitable  reception :  political  considerations  will  aid  the  action  of 
social  and  commercial  influences.  Pressed  upon  by  the  great  powers 
of  Europe — the  same  that  press  upon  us — they  must  in  our  approach 
hail  the  advent  of  friends,  not  of  foes — of  benefactors,  not  of  in 
vaders.  The  moral  and  intellectual  superiority  of  the  white  race 
will  do  the  rest :  and  thus,  the  youngest  people,  and  the  newest  land, 
will  become  the  reviver  and  the  regenerator  of  the  oldest.  .  .  . 

"  Mr.  President,  I  have  performed  a  painful  duty — one  from 
which  I  have  long  held  back,  hoping  that  events  would  correct  the 
errors  of  the  day,  and  free  the  country  from  danger.  There  was 
great  danger  of  war  with  Great  Britain  when  Congress  met  last 
fall,  and  all  upon  a  mistake  and  a  blunder.  War  speeches  and  war 
preparations  were  immediately  commenced  on  this  floor,  and  the 
people  were  inflamed  up  to  the  fighting  point  .  .  .  For  two  years 
the  people  have  been  indoctrinated  with  a  Russian  line  upon  54°  40', 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  311 

from  the  sea  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  Russians  owning  all 
north,  and  we  all  south,  and  leaving  no  room  for  Great  Britain 
between.  Well !  the  treaties  supposed  to  establish  this  boundary, 
and  thus  to  cut  out  Great  Britain,  are  produced,  and  they  show 
that  there  is  no  such  line — that  the  United  States  line  with  Russia 
is  insular,  and  not  continental;  and  that  Russia,  by  treaty,  admits 
the  British  title  quite  out  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  covering  the 
exact  place  where  the  boundary  of  54°  40'  was  supposed  to  be  estab 
lished  !  .  .  .  For  two  years  the  people  have  been  told  that  every 
acre  and  every  inch — every  grain  of  sand,  blade  of  grass,  and  drop  of 
water,  from  42°  to  54°  40',  is  ours.  Geography,  history,  and  the 
maps  are  produced,  and  show  that  Frazer's  River  flows  from  55° 
to  49° — discovered  by  the  British  in  1793 — settled  by  them  in  1806 — 
covered  from  head  to  mouth  with  their  settlements,  and  known  by 
the  Scottish  name  of  New  Caledonia  when  we  negotiated  with  Spain 
in  1819;  and  then  the  Executive  documents  are  produced,  which 
show  that  this  river  and  its  settlements  were  admitted  to  be  British 
property  by  Mr.  Monroe's  Administration,  who  no  more  set  up  a 
title  to  it  under  the  Spanish  treaty  of  1819  than  they  set  up  a  title 
to  Canada  under  the  same  treaty.  Yet  our  warlike  Fifty-Four- 
Forties  opened  the  session  with  demands  for  ships  and  troops  to 
fight  Great  Britain  for  this  very  Frazer's  River!  A  demand  which 
put  her  up  to  ships  and  troops  on  her  side,  until  she  saw  that  these 
intrepid  invaders  of  New  Caledonia  would  be  set  right  at  home. 
From  that  moment  her  war-fever  abated;  the  war- fever  of  our 
valiant  invaders  abated  also:  they  now  cry  war  no  more;  and,  to 
do  them  entire  justice,  I  verily  believe  they  had  never  heard  of 
Frazer's  River  at  the  time  they  proposed  to  walk  over  it  in  their 
march  to  fifty-four-forty.  They  are  now  peaceable  enough ;  and 
all  we  have  to  regret  is  the  discredit  which  their  want  of  acquaint 
ance  with  our  own  treaties — want  of  acquaintance  with  our  own 
documents — and  want  of  acquaintance  with  our  own  geography,  has 
brought  upon  us  in  the  eyes  of  Europe  and  America. 

"  The  danger  is  passed.  The  language  and  conduct  of  Great 
Britain  is  pacific — perfectly  so.  She  was  a  little  rufHed  at  first;  as 
who  would  not  be  at  the  menaced  invasion  of  a  province?  But 
since  she  has  seen  that  the  invaders  are  brought  to  a  stand  at  home, 
she  seems  to  have  recovered  her  good  humor,  and  the  Oregon  ques 
tion  has  nearly  died  out  with  her.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  no  personal  interest  in  this  matter.  After  long  delay  I 
have  spoken  publicly  (for  my  opinions  were  never  a  secret)  what  my 
duty  to  my  country  required  at  my  hands,  and  according  to  the 
knowledge  which  thirty  years'  study  of  the  subject  has  given  to  me. 


312       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

I  have  been  fighting  the  battle  of  Oregon  for  thirty  years,  and  when 
it  had  but  few  friends,  though  now  entirely  eclipsed  by  the  new 
converts.  I  am  where  I  always  have  been,  and  rejoice  to  see  the 
question  coming  to  the  conclusion  which  I  have  always  deemed  the 
right  one.  For  my  justification  in  making  head  against  so  much 
error,  I  throw  myself  upon  the  equity  and  intelligence  of  my  country 
men,  and,  never  having  had  any  fear  for  myself,  I  now  have  none 
for  my  country."  * 

The  time  selected  by  Benton  for  his  speech  turned  out 
to  be  highly  opportune,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  at  the 
very  moment  of  its  delivery  dispatches  from  the  British 
government  were  hurrying  across  the  ocean  to  Pakenham, 
directing  him  to  offer  again  the  compromise  on  the  line 
of  49°  which  Benton  was  arguing  for.  When,  then,  the 
British  project  was  handed  Buchanan  on  June  6,  there 
remained  in  reality  but  little  to  be  done;  and  yet  it  is 
one  of  the  curious  points  in  the  history,  as  shown  by 
Folk's  Diary,  that  even  at  this  late  date  there  was  very 
nearly  a  quarrel  in  the  Cabinet  upon  the  subject,  and  a 
few  days  earlier  (June  3),  when  the  coming  project  was 
fully  and  accurately  outlined  in  a  letter  of  McLane,  Polk 
wrote  in  his  Diary  that  it  was  certain  he  could  not  accept 
it,  and  that  he  did  not  see,  therefore,  how  he  could  submit 
it  to  the  Senate. 

At  the  Cabinet  meeting  on  June  6,  though  there  is 
nothing  to  show  that  Polk  maintained  or  even  presented 
this  view,  yet  the  subject  was  discussed  at  length,  and 
it  is  plain  enough  that  members  were  anxious  to  make 

*  These  extracts  are  from  C.  D.,  29th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  913- 
919.  Benton's  chief  speech  upon  the  subject  (made  on  the  Oregon 
Jurisdiction  Bill)— of  which  these  extracts  are  a  part— is  to  be  found 
in  ibid.,  pp.  851-855,  857-862,  913-919.  See  also  ibid.,  pp.  153,  253- 
254,  404,  405,  581-583,  589,  590,  894,  895.  Cass's  answer  is  in  ibid.,  pp. 
587-589,  and  see  ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  511-514.  Benton's  speech  in 
Executive  Session  on  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  is  in  ibid.,  appen 
dix,  pp.  867-869.  Cass's  speech  against  the  ratification  of  the  treaty 
is  printed  in  ibid.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  26-30. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  313 

their  records  straight  and  not  appear  to  be  in  favor  of 
a  compromise  against  which  there  had  been  a  great  hue 
and  cry.  At  one  stage  of  the  discussion  Buchanan  an 
gered  the  others  very  much  by  saying  "  the  54°  40'  men 
were  the  true  friends  of  the  administration,  and  he 
wished  no  backing  out  on  the  subject."  As  he  had  for 
over  a  year  been  hot-foot  to  compromise  the  question, 
it  was  natural  that  the  other  members  thought  he  was 
not  sincere  in  this  and  was  merely  trying  to  make  up  a 
record;  but,  I  cannot  for  my  part,  escape  the  belief  that 
possibly  others  of  the  Cabinet,  and  certainly  Polk,  were 
equally  fencing  for  position.  For  some  days  after  this, 
and  until  the  treaty  was  sent  to  the  Senate  on  June  10, 
there  was  a  deal  of  discussion  over  the  mere  form  of  the 
message  to  go  with  it  and  different  drafts  were  made  by 
Polk  and  Buchanan,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
two  latter  were  very  close  to  a  rupture.* 

The  plan  of  consulting  the  Senate  in  advance  of  the 
drafting  of  a  final  treaty  was  very  important  to  the 
administration  after  Folk's  past  declarations  as  to  Ore 
gon,  and  as  a  party  move  made  its  position  vastly  easier. 
In  the  message  transmitting  the  project  he  maintained 
that  his  opinions  had  undergone  no  change,  and  threw 

*  The  fact  of  these  very  serious  bickerings  in  the  Cabinet  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  known  to  Buchanan's  biographer ;  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  Buchanan  was  distrusted  by  Polk  to  the  end  of  the  adminis 
tration  (see  passim,  February,  1849),  and  in  one  instance  (see 
February  21,  1848,  and  passim  there)  was  for  a  time  suspected  of 
being  concerned  in  the  publication  of  some  scurrilous  newspaper 
articles,  and  Polk  thought  of  dismissing  him.  Curtis  also  did  not 
know  that  after  the  occasion  when  Buchanan  seems  to  have  wanted 
to  go  on  the  Supreme  Bench,  but  had  to  give  it  up  pending  the 
Oregon  negotiations,  Polk  made  him  once  more  a  formal  offer  of  the 
position  and  had  no  doubt  that  he  would  accept.  Buchanan  con 
sidered  the  subject,  but  became  inspired  with  presidential  aspirations, 
and  ended  by  deciding  to  remain  in  the  Cabinet.  See  Folk's  Diary, 
e.g.,  under  August  i  and  September  u,  1846,  and  November  I,  1847. 


314       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

the  responsibility  of  deciding  whether  to  accept  or  reject 
entirely  upon  the  Senate. 

It  has  been  the  usual  custom  among  us  for  the  Execu 
tive  to  agree  with  a  foreign  power  upon  a  formal  treaty, 
and  only  then  to  submit  this  completed  instrument  to  the 
Senate  for  ratification;  but  Benton  knew  from  our  his 
tory  that  in  earlier  days  the  Executive  had  repeatedly 
consulted  the  Senate  as  to  the  terms  of  a  treaty  in  ad 
vance  of  drawing  one  up,  and  as  early  as  January  8, 
1844,  on  a  motion  to  call  on  Tyler  for  the  instructions 
to  our  minister  in  England  as  to  Oregon,  he  urged  in 
a  speech  in  the  Senate  that  the  older  custom  should  be 
followed.  He  thought  that  in  this  way  better  terms 
would  be  secured,  and  maintained  that  the  treaty  of 
Washington  would  not  have  been  so  favorable  to  the 
British,  as  to  the  boundary  on  the  Northeast,  if  the  Sen 
ate  had  been  consulted  in  advance. 

Benton  intimates  *  that  he  suggested  this  plan  to 
Polk  about  the  time  (June,  1846)  when  Pakenham 
handed  Buchanan  the  project  of  a  treaty,  but  he  must 
have  done  so  earlier,  or  else  the  administration  either 
conceived  the  plan  for  itself  or  took  the  idea  from 
Benton's  speech  of  January,  1844,  for  Buchanan's  cor 
respondence  shows  that  such  was  their  intention  at  least 
as  early  as  December  13,  1845,  and  Folk's  Diary  inti 
mates  the  same  thing  in  October. 

Benton  also  writes  that  about  the  time  when  the  Brit 
ish  project  was  handed  Buchanan,  he  consulted  large 
numbers  of  the  Whig  Senators  in  advance  as  to  their 
course  of  action  upon  a  treaty  based  on  the  line  of  49° 
and  found  that  they  would  afford  every  aid  in  carrying 
it,  so  that  he  was  able  to  assure  the  administration  that 
the  treaty  would  secure  the  requisite  majority,  despite 
the  large  numbers  of  Democrats  opposed  to  it.  So  well 

*  View,  ii.,  p.  674. 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  315 

indeed  was  this  known  that  when,  on  June  6,  Pakenham 
handed  Buchanan  the  British  project,  the  latter  wrote 
a  friend  that  the  Oregon  question  might  be  considered 
settled.  But  on  the  very  eve  of  sending  in  his  message 
Polk  was  still,  according  to  Benton,  "  a  prey  to  anxiety 
as  to  the  conduct  of  the  Whigs,"  and  sent  *  once  more 
for  Benton,  but  was  again  assured  that  two-thirds  of  the 
Senate  would  favor  the  proposition,  and  after  but  three 
days  the  Senate,  on  June  13,  by  a  vote  of  thirty-seven  to 
twelve,  advised  the  acceptance  of  the  proposal. 

The  debates  were  but  short,  and  the  only  hesitation 
was  as  to  the  limited  right  conceded  to  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  and  traders  with  it  to  navigate  the  Columbia. 
The  doubt  was  whether  or  not  this  would  extend  to  a 
possible  renewal  of  the  then  company's  charter  after  its 
expiration  in  1859;  but  we  were  anxious  to  have  the  Ore 
gon  question  out  of  the  way  because  of  the  war  with 
Mexico,  which  had  begun  by  that  time,  and  probably 
also  because  of  the  evidently  impending  change  of  min 
istry  in  England,  so  we  did  not  care  to  run  the  risk  of 
once  more  calling  for  change  upon  a  matter  which  did 
not  seem  vital  and  has  given  no  trouble  at  all. 

With  this  the  Oregon  question  passed  into  history, 
for  the  treaty  which  was  at  once  drawn  in  exact  accord 
ance  with  the  resolution  of  the  Senate  approving  the 
British  project  was  of  course  ratified  on  both  sides. 
Some  English  writers  f  have  thought  that  the  project 
was  an  ultimatum  in  the  ordinary  sense,  but  no  greater 
error  could  be  made.  It  is  clear  beyond  peradventure 

*  Folk's  Diary  does  not  mention  this  interview,  and  the  only 
reference  to  the  probable  course  of  the  Whigs  that  I  have  come 
across  is  when  on  February  28,  1846,  Buchanan  told  Polk  that  he  had 
information  that  a  Whig  caucus  had  decided  not  to  give  their  advice 
on  Oregon,  if  asked  in  advance,  but  to  leave  the  whole  responsibility 
to  the  Executive. 

f  Sir  Arthur  Gordon's  Life  of  Lord  Aberdeen,  p.  180. 


316       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

that  it  was  only  drawn  by  the  British  cabinet  after  care 
fully  ascertaining  in  advance  what  terms  Polk  was  will 
ing  to  agree  to,  and  was  closely  in  pursuance  of  what 
Buchanan  had  months  before  told  McLane  would  be 
submitted  to  the  Senate  by  the  President  and  probably 
be  ratified.  Moreover,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  Brit 
ish  were  prepared  to  alter  the  terms  of  the  project  and 
accept  less  favorable  ones,  in  case  of  its  non-approval  in 
this  country,  and  this  was  almost  admitted  in  words  by 
Aberdeen  to  McLane.* 

It  would  doubtless  have  been  better  for  the  interests 
of  the  United  States  if  we  had  secured  the  whole  of 
Oregon,  but  we  clearly  did  not  own  the  entire  region, 
and  the  treaty  of  1846  was  as  fair  to  both  sides  as  it  is 
possible  to  be  in  such  a  case.  Some  have  thought  our 
true  policy  was  to  follow  Calhoun's  advice  and  merely 
wait,  thus  letting  the  inrush  of  American  settlers  soon 
control  the  whole  region  in  our  interest,  and  this  is  often 
a  wise  national  policy;  but  in  this  particular  instance  (as 
Benton  intimated  in  his  speech  on  February  19)  some 
collision  would  surely  have  occurred  in  the  region  and 
blood  have  been  spilled,  and  in  the  excited  state  of  feel 
ing  in  the  two  countries  this  would  almost  certainly  have 
precipitated  a  war.  It  is  a  curious  study  in  the  methods 
of  human  affairs  that  it  was  only  the  "  bluff"  of  the 
Fifty-Four-Forties  that  at  length  secured  for  us  so  rea 
sonably  fair  a  settlement,  but  we  can  at  least  console  our 
selves  with  the  reflection  that,  if  we  did  secure  our  point 
by  a  not  inspiring  attack  of  blatancy,  our  opponent  had 
for  the  better  part  of  half  a  century  followed  the  poli 
tician's  advice  to  "  claim  everything,"  and  had  insisted 
upon  rights  in  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  to  which  she 
was  far  less  entitled  than  were  we  to  the  whole  of 
Oregon. 

*  McLane  to  Calhoun,  May  18,  1846,  printed  in  Calhoun's  Cor 
respondence,  pp.  1081,  1082. 


THE   OREGON    SETTLEMENT  317 

The  other  great  settlement  with  England  of  about 
this  same  period  had  been  made  during  the  preceding  ad 
ministration  of  Tyler,  and  referred  in  the  main  to  the 
boundary  between  the  countries  on  the  Northeast.  Here 
again  Benton  took  a  very  active  part,  though  it  will  be 
found  that  his  views  had  little  actual  effect.  Ashburton 
had  been  authorized  to  settle  all  matters  in  dispute  be 
tween  us,  but  it  is  evident  now  that  at  his  date  England 
would  not  have  agreed  to  any  settlement  of  the  North 
western  boundary  which  we  could  have  thought  of.  It 
\vas  for  this  reason  that  Webster  soon  left  the  North 
western  question  aside  in  his  negotiations  with  the  Brit 
ish  emissary  and  confined  the  Treaty  of  Washington  to 
the  boundary  on  the  Northeast  and  other  minor  matters. 

Benton  aways  maintained  that  this  was  not  only  very 
unjust  to  the  West,  but  was,  moreover,  a  grievous  blunder 
in  any  event,  and  that  a  complete  settlement  of  all  ques 
tions  should  have  been  made  or  none  whatsoever,  and 
there  was  beyond  question  great  force  in  this  contention. 
England  needed  almost  imperatively  certain  territory  on 
the  Northeast  which  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  belonged 
in  reality  to  us.  She  was — as  Benton  maintained  at  the 
time — extremely  anxious  to  secure  a  military  road  be 
tween  Halifax  and  Quebec,  and  had  indeed  been  per 
sistently  aiming  at  this  end  since  at  least  1822.* 

It  was  undoubtedly,  therefore,  a  questionable  policy 
to  yield  to  her  this  one  main  point  for  which  she  was  so 
anxious  and  to  leave  entirely  aside  a  second  main  ques 
tion  of  great  and  growing  importance  to  us.  Still,  the 
Treaty  of  Washington  contained  provisions  in  our  favor 
which  made  some  counterweight  for  our  concessions  on 
the  Northeast,  and  was  one  of  those  cases  of  compromise 
in  which  numbers  of  the  public  men  on  both  sides  always 

*  Stratford  Canning  admitted  to  Adams  in  that  year  that  such 
was  their  purpose.  J.  Q.  Adams's  Diary,  vi.,  pp.  90,  91. 


318       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

maintain  that  the  whole  benefit  has  accrued  to  the  other 
party. 

Benton  undoubtedly  approached  the  matter  from  a 
stand-point  of  opposition,  and  had,  moreover,  an  entire 
lack  of  confidence  in  Webster's  fitness  for  such  a  nego 
tiation.  Though  quite  appreciating  the  stupendous  in 
tellectual  ability  of  the  great  New  Englander,  and  ad 
miring  to  the  full  the  magnificent  position  filled  by  him  I 
at  times,  the  case  in  hand  was,  in  Benton's  opinion,  one 
calling  more  for  an  iron  will  than  for  a  shining  intellect, 
and  he  well  writes  that  Webster  "  was  not  the  man,  with 
a  goose-quill  in  his  hand,  to  stand  up  against  the  British 
empire  in  arms." 

In  the  earlier  case  of  the  "  Caroline"  and  McLeod, 
when  Webster,  as  Secretary  of  State,  had  undoubtedly 
receded  too  quickly  from  the  bolder  position  taken  by 
his  predecessor  and  had  admitted  in  panicky  haste  the 
claims  of  the  British  government,  Benton  maintained 
later  in  the  Senate  that  he  had  understood  Webster's 
tendencies  so  well  as  to  prophesy  exactly  what  would 
happen  on  the  very  day  when  the  imperative  British 
demand  was  known  in  Washington. 

Again,  in  regard  to  the  negotiations  as  to  our  main 
taining  a  fleet  for  the  suppression  of  the  slave-trade, 
Benton  seems  to  have  feared  that  Webster  was  yielding 
some  of  our  historic  position  as  to  the  right  of  search 
(or  of  visitation,  to  use  the  new  word  coined  for  the 
occasion),  and  long  tried  to  ferret  out  what  was  really 
being  done  in  the  matter;  and  when  later  it  became 
known  that  Webster  had  written  letters  to  Ashburton 
against  the  old  British  claim  of  a  right  of  search,  and 
had  secured  an  infinitely  guarded  reply,  Benton  insisted 
in  the  Senate,  with  the  approval  of  members,  that  this 
was  all  wrong,  and  that  our  national  dignity  required 
that,  after  we  had  once  gone  to  war  on  the  subject,  it 
should  not  have  been  mentioned  on  our  side,  and  that, 


THE    OREGON    SETTLEMENT  3*9 

"  if  mentioned  by  the  British  negotiators,  [Webster] 
should  have  replied  that  the  answer  to  that  pretension 
was  in  the  cannon's  mouth." 

With  these  feelings  in  his  mind  as  to  the  general 
course  of  the  American  negotiator,  and  with  a  treaty  be 
fore  him  negotiated  by  the  Whigs,  it  was  to  be  expected 
that  Benton  would  oppose  the  Treaty  of  Washington, 
and  he  did  oppose  it  persistently  and  to  the  end.  Indeed, 
so  profoundly  in  earnest  was  he  that  the  occasion  was  ap 
parently  one  of  the  few  in  which  he  carried  public  affairs 
home  with  him  and  became  silent  and  abstracted  in  his 
family  circle. 

Nor  did  he  by  any  means  confine  his  opposition  to 
the  concession  of  the  long-sought  military  road,  but  ob 
jected  equally  for  numerous  other  reasons  in  a  very  long 
speech.  The  unusual  method  of  conducting  the  negotia 
tion  without  protocols,  so  that  no  one  could  learn  how 
the  treaty  had  grown,  and  the  silent  abandonment  of  the 
question  of  the  release  of  slaves  from  vessels  driven  by 
stress  of  weather  into  English  ports,  were  among  these; 
and  so  was  the  agreement  to  surrender  certain  civil  of 
fenders,  which  he  maintained  would  soon  lead  to  the 
giving  over  of  political  offenders  in  general,  and  was  now 
meant  to  bring  about  the  surrender  of  the  recent  Cana 
dian  rebels. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  Treaty  of  Washing 
ton  as  a  whole,  it  cannot,  in  my  opinion,  be  doubted  that 
some  of  Benton's  views  were  colored  by  the  necessities 
of  the  great  battle  of  politics.  It  is  one  of  the  ills  of 
party  government,  but  absolutely  unavoidable  in  all 
countries,  that  the  party  which  is  out  of  office  shall 
oppose  measures  further  than  they  ought  to  be  opposed 
and,  evil  though  this  may  be  in  some  aspects,  yet  it  has  at 
least  a  good  side  in  leading  to  a  full  understanding  and 
proper  conclusion.  It  cannot  be  decided  to  what  extent 
Benton  was  led  on  by  these  partisan  feelings  in  this  mat- 


320       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

ter,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  doubt  that  he  thought  the 
treaty  ought,  on  the  whole,  to  be  beaten. 

He  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  dogged  of  our 
public  men  in  the  maintenance  of  what  he  thought  our 
just  rights,  and  was  strongly  opposed  to  that  tendency 
to  be  gentle  and  yielding,  with  the  English  in  particular, 
which  has  in  all  our  history  been  a  marked  trait  in  the 
character  of  some  of  our  statesmen  and  was  certainly  so 
in  the  case  of  Webster.  But,  important  as  the  matter 
seemed  to  Benton  at  the  time,  his  efforts  had  but  little 
effect,  and  only  he  and  eight  other  members  of  the  Sen 
ate  voted  against  the  treaty,  while  thirty-nine  voted  in 
favor  of  ratification.* 

*  For  the  statements  in  regard  to  the  British  treaty,  see  View, 
ii.,  p.  91.  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  43.  Ibid.,  27th 
Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp.  56,  64,  70-81,  85,  33i~334-  Ibid.,  appendix,  pp. 
1-27.  Memoirs  of  John  C.  Fremont,  i.,  pp.  414,  415. 


CHAPTER     XVII 

SOUTHERN  VIEW  OF  SLAVERY EARLY  EFFORTS  AT  EMAN 
CIPATION GROWING  ABOLITION   SENTIMENT   IN    THE 

NORTH THE    PERSONAL    LIBERTY    LAWS,    ETC. BEN- 

TON'S  GENERAL  COURSE — VOTES  AGAINST  CALHOUN'S 
INCENDIARY  PUBLICATIONS  BILL 

WE  have  now  reached  a  point  in  Benton's  career 
where  we  shall  be  met  at  every  turn  by  that  question 
which  finally  broke  his  power  as  a  public  man  and  rele 
gated  him  to  private  life.  Slavery  had  been  warmly 
under  discussion  at  the  time  he  came  to  Washington  in 
1820  to  enter  the  Senate,  but  after  this  date  not  very 
much  was  heard  of  it  in  the  halls  of  Congress  until  near 
the  end  of  the  first  third  of  the  century,  when  the  fire 
burst  forth  once  more  with  redoubled  fury.  From  then 
on  until  after  his  death  hardly  a  session  passed  without 
the  most  desperate  battles  upon  the  subject,  and  these 
grew  more  and  more  fierce  as  time  wore  on.  And  when 
finally  the  South,  aiming  to  save  her  waning  power  by 
the  annexation  of  new  territory  from  which  to  create 
more  slave  States,  succeeded  in  wresting  vast  regions 
from  Mexico,  the  new  possessions,  instead  of  securing 
forever  that  system  which  was  an  essential  element  in 
her  whole  social  being,  became  in  reality  the  underlying 
cause  which  led  to  the  tragic  bouleversement  of  1861-65. 

It  is  absolutely  essential  to  consider  here  the  subject 
of  slavery  and  the  agitation  in  regard  to  it  on  both  sides, 
and  there  is,  happily,  evidence  in  some  recent  writings 
that  the  time  is  at  hand  when  this  can  be  done  free  from 
the  control  of  mere  passion  and  prejudice.  May  it  not, 
too,  be  hoped  that  Benton's  career  offers  a  better  chance 

21  321 


322       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

for  an  impartial  treatment  of  the  subject  than  that  of 
others  of  our  great  men? 

A  Southerner  by  birth  and  training,  he  was  for  many 
years  a  supporter  of  the  claims  of  the  South  upon  the 
subject,  but  he  was  throughout  his  whole  career  above 
all  things  a  lover  of  the  Union  as  the  sheet-anchor  of  our 
hopes.  He  accordingly  detested  with  a  very  loathing  the 
early  abolition  excitement,  the  tendency  of  which  to  un 
dermine  the  Union  he  at  once  fully  appreciated,  and  acted 
with  the  South  in  all  the  earlier  efforts  to  allay  it ;  but  his 
view  was  that  in  the  later  stages  of  the  struggle  the 
South  became  in  turn  the  aggressor,  and  that  her  great 
leaders  flung  aside  all  else  but  sectional  advantage  and 
purposely  aimed  to  keep  up  the  agitation,  with  even 
the  conscious  design  of  destroying  the  Union.  This  at 
once  aroused  his  love  of  the  broad  country  he  called 
his,  and  he  entered  upon  a  course  of  opposition  which 
ended  only  with  his  death.  Such  a  career  brought 
him  bitter  criticism  in  his  lifetime  as  a  renegade  and  a 
traitor,  but  history  will  probably  record  that  he  held  in 
the  main  a  course  more  nearly  right  than  did  many  of 
his  contemporaries  on  either  side. 

In  order  to  understand  his  position  in  the  early  stages 
of  the  contest  it  is  absolutely  essential  at  the  very  start 
to  try  and  put  ourselves  as  closely  as  we  can  in  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  average  Southerner  of  a  hundred  years 
ago  in  regard  to  slavery.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  things 
impossible  that  the  South  should  look  upon  slavery  as  we 
do  to-day,  or  as  did  some  few  people  of  that  time  who 
lived  at  a  distance.  The  fact  cannot  be  doubted  that  the 
system  was  a  thoroughly  bad  one,  but  that  is  not  the 
question  here.  The  point  for  us  now  is  that  the  South 
had  been  born  and  bred  to  it  for  generations. 

From  the  day  when  his  childish  mind  began  first  to 
open  and  to  observe,  the  Southerner  saw  the  whole  civili 
zation  about  him  based  on  this  system.  The  nursery,  the 


FORERUNNERS    OF    SLAVERY    DISPUTES     323 

household,  the  field,  all  public  and  private  life,  the  teach 
ings  he  received  from  those  whom  nature  made  his  early 
years  believe  infallible,  everything  taught  the  same  lesson 
that  the  blacks  were  of  right  a  subject  race  and  were  in 
capable  of  any  higher  end.  And  as  the  years  advanced 
and  intelligence  grew,  the  young  man  came  to  see  with 
his  own  eyes  the  boundless  chasm  which  divided  the 
whites  from  the  blacks.  On  the  one  side  a  proud  race  of 
masterful  white  men;  on  the  other  a  horde  of  blacks, 
immeasurably  beneath  the  whites  in  every  respect,  with 
incapable  brains  and  with  all  their  features  and  brutal 
passions  speaking  aloud  of  recent  emergence  from  utter 
barbarism,  while  their  childlike  heedlessness  and  inca 
pacity  to  organize  seemed  to  stamp  them  as  a  people  fit 
only  to  be  led  and  domineered  by  a  superior  race. 

Nor  was  this  more  than  the  beginning  of  the  evi 
dence  of  incapacity,  for  growing  knowledge  soon  taught 
that  even  these  blacks  were  above  their  ancestors  who 
had  been  brought  to  America  and  who  were  fair  types 
of  the  African  negro,*  and  that  in  all  the  aeons  of  time 
this  race  had  never  yet  once  developed  a  semi-civiliza 
tion  nor  more  than  a  handful  of  men  of  even  any  pre 
tence  of  high  capacity.  Other  races  have  in  numerous 
instances  evolved  a  real  civilization  within  themselves, 
the  African  negro  never.  And  in  the  few  cases  in  which, 
after  having  been  partly  civilized  by  long  contact  with 
their  white  masters,  they  have  then  been  left  to  them 
selves — as  in  some  of  the  West  India  islands — they  have 
beyond  question  largely  gone  backward  on  the  road  lead 
ing  to  barbarism. 

With  all  these  facts  staring  him  in  the  face,  it  cannot 
excite  wonder  that  the  average  Southerner  simply  ac- 


*  I  use  the  term  ordinarily  employed,  which  is,  however,  tau- 
tologous,  for  all  the  true  negroes  are  of  African  origin  and,  indeed, 
confined  to  limited  areas  of  that  continent. 


324       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

cepted  slavery  as  a  thing  perfectly  natural,  and  that  even 
those  few  who  disapproved  in  the  abstract  of  the  system 
came  to  feel  that  their  whole  civilization  was  so  inter 
woven  with  it  that  the  wit  of  man  could  not  devise  a 
cure,  and  looked  upon  it  somewhat  as  we  do  upon  pain, 
the  existence  of  evil,  or  that  crushing  struggle  of  life 
which  inflicts  such  fearful  hardship. 

These  early  impressions,  of  which  I  have  endeavored 
thus  to  suggest  the  bare  outlines,  must  have  been  a  part 
of  the  very  bone  and  fibre  of  Benton's  mind.  Probably 
cared  for  by  a  "  mammy,"  his  childhood  in  North  Caro 
lina  was  at  least  surrounded  on  all  sides  with  slavery,  and 
it  has  been  seen  that  youth  in  Tennessee  found  him  di 
recting  and  managing  slaves  of  his  own  or  of  the  family. 
He  said  of  himself  in  secret  session  in  1844,  "  I  am 
Southern  by  my  birth — Southern  in  my  affections,  in 
terests,  and  connections — and  shall  abide  the  fate  of  the 
South  in  everything  in  which  she  has  right  upon  her 
side.  I  am  a  slave-holder,  and  shall  take  the  fate  of  other 
slave-holders  in  every  aggression  upon  that  species  of 
property,  and  in  every  attempt  to  excite  a  San  Domingo 
insurrection  among  us." 

And  a  very  few  years  later  he  said, "  I  was  born  to  the 
inheritance  of  slaves,  and  have  never  been  without  them. 
I  have  bought  some,  but  only  on  their  own  entreaty,  and 
to  save  them  from  execution  sales;  I  have  sold  some, 
but  only  for  misconduct.  I  have  had  two  taken  from  me 
by  the  abolitionists,  and  never  inquired  after  them;  and 
liberated  a  third  who  would  not  go  with  them." 
Throughout  his  whole  life  he  seems  to  have  kept  them  as 
household  servants,  and  as  late  as  1850  he  was  one  of 
the  few  members  of  Congress  who  were  in  the  habit  of 
bringing  their  slaves  to  Washington.* 

*  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  485.  Speech  at  Jeffer 
son  City,  Missouri,  May  26,  1849,  printed  in  pamphlet  form.  C.  G., 
3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  681. 


FORERUNNERS    OF    SLAVERY    DISPUTES     325 

With  this  life  history  behind  him,  Benton  would 
have  been  almost  superhuman  if  he  had  not  in  the  main 
accepted  slavery.  It  is  true  that  while  he  was  a  student 
of  law  he  became  convinced  by  one  of  the  appendices  to 
Tucker's  "  Blackstone"  that  the  system  was  a  bad  one,  but 
he  was  far  from  accepting  the  remedy  of  emancipation, 
and  thought  it  would  be  fraught  with  far  greater  ills  than 
the  disease.  It  may  be  conjectured  that  he  would  have 
endorsed  the  view  of  Macon,  that  "  it  is  in  vain  to  talk 
of  turning  these  creatures  loose  to  cut  our  throats."  The 
dread  of  slave  uprisings  was  ever  present  in  the  South 
and  exerted  a  marked  influence  upon  its  course  from 
the  day  when  abolition  began  to  be  agitated,  and  indeed 
from  the  time  of  the  Hayti  insurrection. 

More  than  one  of  Benton's  speeches  show  this  fear 
on  his  part,  and  he  was  undoubtedly  in  favor  of  keeping 
the  black  race — including  the  free  negroes — in  a  state  of 
subordination,  so  as  to  minimize  the  danger.  In  one  in 
stance  in  1842  he  earnestly  supported  an  amendment  pro 
posed  by  Calhoun  to  an  army  bill  intended  to  prevent  the 
enlistment  of  free  blacks,  and  said  that  "  arms  ought  to 
be  borne  by  the  white  race  only.  This  was  the  first  time 
he  ever  heard  that  the  black  race  carried  arms;"  and  in 
1850,  during  the  proceedings  upon  the  fugitive-slave  bill, 
he  voted  (as  was  beyond  doubt  absolutely  necessary  to 
make  the  remedy  of  any  effect)  against  giving  the  al 
leged  slave  a  trial  by  jury  in  the  place  where  he  might 
be  arrested,  contending  that  the  arrest  and  return  to  the 
State  whence  he  had  escaped  were  similar  to  extradition, 
and  that  any  trial  should  then  be  had  in  the  forum  to 
which  he  was  returned.* 

The  distrust  in  the  South  of  the  ultimate  intentions 


326       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

of  the  North  in  the  agitation  against  slavery  began  ear 
lier  and  was  of  slower  growth  than  is  sometimes  thought. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  numbers  of  leading  South 
erners  of  Revolutionary  and  somewhat  later  days  were 
seeking  for  an  escape  from  slavery,  and  it  is  not  impossi 
ble  that  they  might,  if  left  to  themselves,  have  found  the 
means  of  securing  gradual  abolition;  but  there  were 
others  of  even  a  very  early  day  who  looked  with  great 
suspicion  upon  the  discussion  of  the  subject  in  Congress. 
The  dread  of  insurrections  was  never  absent  from  them, 
and  as  early  as  1797  Southern  members  had  exhibited  no 
little  anger  at  the  repeated  presentation  of  abolition  peti 
tions. 

Again,  though  the  South  largely  furnished  the  sup 
port  of  the  American  Colonization  Society  and  some 
other  like  bodies,  yet  Randolph,  for  example,  in  1811, 
showed  clearly  enough  his  suspicions  upon  the  subject 
when  he  complained  that  the  French  doctrines  of  the 
imprescriptible  rights  of  man  were  "  disseminated  by  ped- 
lers  from  New  England  and  elsewhere  throughout  the 
Southern  country;"  and  the  same  eccentric  member  was 
greatly  shocked  when  he  attended  a  meeting  of  the  Afri 
can  Institute  in  London  and  heard  an  English  army  offi 
cer  say  openly  that  in  case  of  a  revolt  in  Jamaica  he 
should  feel  compelled  to  take  part  with  the  blacks  as  the 
oppressed  party.* 

Probably  to  the  very  end  the  South  never  fully  appre 
ciated  how  entirely  the  growth  of  the  world  was  away 
from  them,  nor  do  they  seem  to  have  realized  that  the 
necessary  tendency  of  American  democracy  was  to  pro 
duce  a  feeling  of  horror  at  the  system  and  of  profound 
pity  for  even  the  most  degraded  black,  who  might  be 
seized  and  dragged  back  to  bondage.  It  may  be  said  of 


*Von  Hoist's  United  States,  i.  (1750-1833),  p.  307.  Garland's 
Life  of  Randolph,  i.,  pp.  294,  295.  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.,  part  i,  1825-26, 
p.  120. 


FORERUNNERS   OF   SLAVERY   DISPUTES    327 

slavery,  if  of  anything,  that  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  it;  at  every  revolution  of  the  earth  they 
looked  down  upon  this  so  ancient  system  losing  caste 
and  power,  and  every  decade  developed  new  lines  of 
opposition. 

In  1815  the  first  of  our  abolition  papers,  Osborn's 
Philanthropist,  was  founded  at  Mt.  Pleasant,  Ohio,  and 
in  1821  Lundy's  Genius  first  saw  the  light  of  day.  In 
1822  an  insurrection  was  suppressed  in  Charleston, 
thought  to  have  been  instigated  (as  was  often  the  case) 
by  a  free  black,  and  South  Carolina  passed  her  Negro 
Seamen  Act,  the  chief  purpose  of  which  was  to  exclude 
free  negroes  and  to  curb  their  rights.  This  law  led  to 
an  angry  discussion  of  the  whole  subject  in  several  States, 
and  in  the  Georgia  Legislature  the  opinion  was  authori 
tatively  expressed  *  that  they  must  say  to  the  Union  "  we 
will  no  longer  submit  our  retained  rights  to  the  snivel 
ling  insinuations  of  bad  men  on  the  floor  of  Congress." 

The  proposed  Panama  Congress  furnished  once  more 
in  1826  a  ground  for  discussion  of  the  general  subject 
in  Congress,  and  Benton  did  but  express  Southern  senti 
ment  when  he  objected  f  to  discussing  our  policy  as  to 
Hayti  with  "  five  nations  who  have  already  put  the  black 
man  on  an  equality  with  the  white,  not  only  in  their  con 
stitutions  but  in  real  life  .  .  .  who  have  .  .  .  black  gen 
erals  in  their  armies  and  mulatto  senators  in  their  con 
gresses."  Randolph,  too,  in  this  debate  exhibited  his 
jealousy  and  suspicion  in  one  of  his  rambling  speeches ;  $ 
but  at  the  next  session  the  feeling  of  the  South  came  out 
even  more  strongly. 

A  petition  for  aid  was  presented  by  the  American 
Colonization  Society  and  secured  a  favorable  report  from 


*  McMaster's  United  States,  v.,  pp.  199-206. 

t  Schouler's  United  States,  iii.,  p.  366. 

$  C.  D.,  vol.  ii.,  part  I,  1825-26,  pp.  112,  114,  115-131. 


328       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

a  special  committee  in  the  House,  but  in  the  Senate  was 
laid  upon  the  table  on  Benton's  motion,  after  it  had  been 
openly  opposed  by  some  Southerners  as  "an  entering 
wedge"  for  ulterior  purposes.  The  defenders  of  the  peti 
tion  disclaimed  any  such  purpose,  but  naively  admitted 
that  there  might  be  "  collateral  consequences"  of  the  so 
ciety's  proceedings  for  which,  they  claimed,  "  the  society 
is  not  responsible."  * 

Early  in  1831  Garrison  began  the  publication  of  the 
Liberator,  the  most  revolutionary  of  the  early  abolition 
papers,  and  by  the  end  of  1835  there  were  three  hundred 
and  fifty  anti-slavery  societies  in  New  England.  In  the 
same  year  that  Garrison  began  his  publication,  Nat. 
Turner's  insurrection  f  was  crushed  in  Virginia  after 
more  than  sixty  whites  had  been  murdered,  and  about 
this  same  time  began  the  furious  agitation  in  Congress 
over  the  presentation  of  abolition  petitions.  John  Quincy 
Adams,  who  in  1831-32  disliked  greatly  to  present  them 
and  evidently  felt  it  unpatriotic  to  do  so,  soon  became  the 
leader  in  this  form  of  agitation;  and  it  is  instructive  to 
observe  how  about  this  time  he  came  slowly  to  seek  the 
abolitionists,  and  then,  after  much  hesitation  and  bal 
ancing  flung  himself  altogether  to  the  side  of  the  agita 
tors  and  became  their  leading  spokesman.:): 

*C  D.,  vol.  iii.,  1826-27,  pp.  1214,  1215,  1532,  1533,  289,  319, 
328,  334.  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.,  part  i,  pp.  806,  808-810. 

f  It  has  always  been  disputed  whether  there  was  any  relation  of 
cause  and  effect  between  the  Liberator  and  this  insurrection,  but  it 
is  at  least  noteworthy  that  in  the  very  year  when  Garrison  began  his 
publication  the  paper  penetrated  so  far  south  that  the  Georgia  Legis 
lature  offered  a  large  reward  for  the  conviction  of  any  one  found 
circulating  it.  Schouler's  United  States,  iv.,  pp.  211,  212. 

$  See  his  Diary,  vol.  viii.,  p.  454,  January  10,  1832,  where  he  says 
that  in  presenting  such  petitions  a  few  days  before  he  had  "  ex 
pressed  the  wish  that  the  subject  might  not  be  discussed  in  the 
House,  because  I  believed  discussion  would  lead  to  ill-will,  to  heart 
burnings,  to  mutual  hatred,  where  the  first  of  wants  was  harmony; 


FORERUNNERS   OF    SLAVERY   DISPUTES    329 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  at  length  into  the  question 
of  the  abolition  petitions  in  Congress  or  of  the  agitation 
in  regard  to  slavery  in  general.  What  concerns  us  is 
Benton's  course  upon  the  subject,  and  he  was  beyond 
doubt  at  all  times  of  his  career  sincerely  opposed  to  the 
agitation  of  this  or  any  other  subject  which  endangered 
the  Union.  It  has  been  seen  that  he  had  urged  in  1820 
that  Missouri  should  constitute  herself  a  slave  State, 
and  he  was  strongly  opposed  to  the  efforts  made  in  Con 
gress  to  force  her  to  give  up  the  system. 

He  evidently  became  impressed  at  that  time  with  the 
dangers  to  the  Union  which  lurked  in  the  partisan  agita 
tion  of  the  subject  then  first  started,  and  he  could  proba 
bly  have  said  with  Jefferson  that  the  Missouri  question, 
"  like  a  fire-bell  in  the  night,  awakened  and  filled  me  with 
terror,"  if  he  was  still  too  full  of  the  hope  of  youth  to  go 
on  with  the  older  man,  "  I  considered  it  at  once  the  knell 
of  the  Union."  It  \vas  his  desire  to  prevent  this  agita 
tion  that  led  him  to  procure  *  the  insertion  in  her  Consti 
tution  of  provisions  intended  to  exclude  the  subject  from 
the  field  of  politics  in  Missouri,  the  chief  of  which  was 
that  the  Legislature  should  "  not  have  power  to  pass  laws 
for  the  emancipation  of  slaves  without  the  consent  of 
their  owners;  or  without  paying  them,  before  such 
emancipation,  a  full  equivalent  for  such  slaves  so  emanci 
pated." 


and  without  accomplishing  anything  else."  And  yet  this  is  the  same 
man  who  a  few  years  later  repeatedly  told  Henry  A.  Wise  that  he 
would  not  abolish  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  but  wanted  to 
preserve  it  for  agitation  until  slavery  in  the  States  should  be 
shaken  from  its  base  (Barton  H.  Wise's  Life  of  Henry  A.  Wise,  pp. 
61,  62).  Some  slight  hints  as  to  his  gradual  change  of  view  may  be 
found  in  his  Diary,  ix.,  pp.  206,  207,  251-253,  255,  266-268,  302,  303, 
349,  350,  365,  377,  380,  381.  See  also  View,  i.,  pp.  622,  623. 

*  View,  i.,  pp.  8,  9.    Art.  iii.,  Sec.  26,  of  the  Constitution  of  Mis 
souri  of  1820. 


330       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

It  will  be  found  that,  from  the  start  to  the  finish  of  his 
career,  he  consistently  followed  the  line  of  policy  here 
indicated.  He  held  that  all  real  necessity  for  discussion 
had  been  removed  by  the  Ordinance  of  1787  and  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise,  which  prescribed  exactly  in  what  ter 
ritory  slavery  should  and  should  not  exist,  and  he  there 
fore  looked  upon  the  introduction  of  the  subject  soon 
after  1830  as  being  in  a  high  degree  unpatriotic  and  in 
tended  merely  for  the  purpose  of  revolutionary  agitation. 

It  cannot  be  doubted,  moreover,  that  from  about  1830 
down  to  1860  the  abolition  movement  was  distinctly 
coupled  with  a  movement  to  break  up  the  country.  The 
abolitionists  as  a  class  cared  little  or  nothing  for  the 
Union,  and  their  leaders  almost  to  a  man  openly  detested 
and  reviled  the  Constitution,  were  fairly  ribald  upon  it, 
invoked  curses  upon  it,  and  prayed  and  hoped  for  the  dis 
solution  and  disruption  of  the  Union  by  any  means  and  at 
any  cost.*  This  was  of  course  gall  and  wormwood  to 
Benton,  who  admitted  that  some  of  the  abolitionists  were 
"  good  people  seeking  benevolent  ends  by  mistaken 
means,"  but  insisted  that  as  a  class  they  were  "  incendia 
ries  and  agitators,  with  diabolical  objects  in  view,  to  be 
accomplished  by  wicked  and  deplorable  means.  .  .  .  He 
presumed  it  would  be  admitted  that  every  attempt  to 
work  upon  the  passions  of  the  slaves  and  to  excite  them 
to  murder  their  owners  was  a  wicked  and  diabolical  at 
tempt  and  the  work  of  a  midnight  incendiary.  Pictures 
of  slave  degradation  and  misery,  and  of  the  white  man's 
luxury  and  cruelty,  were  attempts  of  this  kind." 

It  was,  moreover,  impossible  that  a  statesman  should 
feel  anything  but  detestation  and  even  contempt  for  the 
absurd  opinions  and  actions  of  the  abolitionists,  Utterly 

*  I  reproduce  this  from  my  Life  of  Charles  Jared  Ingersoll,  pp. 
234>  235>  where  I  have  considered  this  question  and  adduced  from 
pro-abolition  writers  ample  evidence  of  the  facts  asserted. 


FORERUNNERS    OF    SLAVERY    DISPUTES     331 

impracticable  throughout  their  whole  course  and  stone- 
blind,  in  their  furious  fanaticism,  to  the  hard  truth  of  the 
negro's  incapacity,  one  of  their  chief  leaders,  who  has 
been  well-nigh  canonized  among  New  England  his 
torians,  actually  thought  after  the  war  that  "  in  a  few 
years  the  blacks  would  be  the  sovereign  race  in  the  South 
ern  States  in  wealth,  intelligence,  and  power."  *  Where 
can  a  more  blundering  judgment  be  found  in  the  whole 
history  of  human  error? 

In  Benton's  opinion,  too,  the  abolition  agitation  was 
not  only  dangerous  to  the  Union,  but  very  harmful  to 
the  blacks  and  tended  necessarily  to  drive  the  South  to 
the  support  of  the  system.  "  Slavery  in  the  abstract," 
said  he  in  the  debate  on  Foot's  resolution  in  1829,  "  has 
but  few  advocates  or  defenders  in  the  slave-holding 
States,  and  slavery  as  it  is — an  hereditary  institution 
descended  upon  us  from  our  ancestors — would  have 
fewer  advocates  among  us  than  it  has  if  those  who  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  subject  would  only  let  us  alone. 
The  sentiment  in  favor  of  slaver)"  was  much  weaker 
before  these  intermeddlers  began  their  operations  than 
it  is  at  present." 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  lot  of  the  slave  became 
a  harder  one  just  about  the  time  the  great  agitation  began 
after  1830,  and  though  some  writers  have  found  deep- 
seated  reasons  for  this  in  the  invention  of  the  cotton-gin 
and  the  consequent  demand  'for  slaves  on  large  planta 
tions,  yet  probably  no  reason  but  the  agitation  f  would 

*  Opinion  expressed  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison  in  1867.  Life, 
Letters,  and  Friendship  of  R.  Monckton  Milnes  (Lord  Houghton), 
vol.  ii.,  p.  175.  Benton's  speech  is  to  be  found  in  C.  D.,  vol.  xii., 
part  I,  1835-36,  p.  85. 

f  This  opinion  was  irresistibly  forced  upon  the  Rev.  Nehemiah 
Adams,  of  Boston,  who  went  South  and  investigated  the  subject  of 
slavery  about  1850,  although  he  had  theretofore  been  on  the  anti- 
slavery  side.  He  wrote  the  "  South  Side  View  of  Slavery,"  to  give 


332       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ever  have  been  suggested  had  not  the  subject  been  one 
of  partisan  discussion.  Agitation  against  slavery  and 
the  circulation  among  the  free  blacks  in  the  Southern 
States  of  what  were  well  called  incendiary  publications, 
and  were  of  course  meant  to  reach  the  eye  of  the  slave, 
could  not  but  drive  the  South  to  harsh  measures  to  pro 
tect  herself  from  the  hideous  dangers  of  revolt.  It  was 
impossible  for  them  willingly  to  tolerate  that  the  passions 
of  their  slaves  should  be  excited  by  pictures  undoubtedly 
tending  and  even  intended  to  lead  them  to  violence. 

Cartoons  such  as  Benton  received  and  described  * 
representing  "a  large  and  spreading  tree  of  liberty,  be 
neath  whose  ample  shade  a  slave-owner  was  at  one  time 
luxuriously  reposing,  with  slaves  fanning  him;  at  an 
other  carried  forth  in  a  palanquin,  to  view  the  half-naked 
laborers  in  the  cotton-field,  whom  drivers,  with  whips, 
were  scourging  to  the  task,"  were  certainly  fairly  called 
appeals  to  the  vengeance  of  the  slaves,  while  others  were 
of  a  disgusting  and  obscene  character  which  need  not  be 
described.  And  these  vile  things  were  circulated  through 
the  South  in  just  such  forms  as  were  likely  to  reach  the 
blacks,  being,  for  instance,  printed  on  coarse  handker 
chiefs  sent  South  for  sale  or  folded  inside  the  wrappers  of 
chocolates  and  candies. 

Benton  points  out  how  much  harm  was  done  to  the 
slave  by  these  means,  and,  among  other  instances,  says  f 
that  a  clause  in  the  Missouri  Constitution  prohibiting  the 
immigration  of  free  negroes  had  been  a  dead  letter  until 
the  abolition  agitation  began,  when  these  unfortunate 
people  were  forced  to  leave  the  State  in  large  numbers. 


his  views  upon  the  question,  but  his  book  is  not  cited  as  often  as  it 
should  be.  See  also  Ballagh's  Slavery  in  Virginia,  pp.  141,  142. 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  I,  1835-36,  pp.  85,  86. 

tView,  i.,  pp.  578,  579,  and  see  p.  136.  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  I, 
1835-36,  p.  87.  Ballagh's  Slavery  in  Virginia,  p.  146. 


FORERUNNERS    OF    SLAVERY    DISPUTES     333 

He  gave  letters  to  several  of  them  to  show  that  they  were 
not  driven  out  because  of  any  crime.  The  real  reason 
for  their  expulsion  was  of  course  that  their  class  fur 
nished  the  point  of  contact  by  which  the  agents  of  aboli 
tion  sought  to  reach  the  slave. 

The  way  in  which  the  subject  came  chiefly  before 
Benton  at  about  this  time  was  in  the  abolition  petitions, 
and  he  looked  upon  their  introduction  with  complete  dis 
favor  and  for  some  years  acted  with  the  Southerners  in 
all  their  efforts  to  get  rid  of  them.  He  generally  gave 
merely  a  silent  vote,  so  as  to  avoid  discussion,  and  when 
he  did  speak,  it  was  but  shortly  and  with  a  view  to  put 
ting  the  question  quietly  aside;  and  he  writes  that  his 
opinion  was  that  the  mode  of  attaining  this  end  should 
be  pointed  out  by  the  Northern  opponents  of  the  agita 
tion,  as  they  must  know  best  the  way  in  which  to  allay  the 
excitement  in  the  North. 

He  even  expresses  *  himself  as  having  fully  approved 
of  the  House  rule  of  1837-38,  which  was  very  similar  to 
that  of  1836,  and  provided  that  all  petitions  in  regard  to 
abolition,  etc.,  "  be  laid  on  the  table,  without  being  de 
bated,  printed,  read,  or  referred,  and  that  no  further 
action  whatever  shall  be  had  thereon;"  but  it  is  evident 
that  before  this  time  he  was  growing  restless  and  thought 
the  Southern  leaders  were  acting  a  highly  impolitic 
course. 

Indeed,  as  to  this  very  matter  of  putting  aside  the 
abolition  petitions,  though  he  may  at  times  have  ap 
proved  of  high-handed  measures  in  order  to  gain  the  end 
he  held  so  important,  yet  he  clearly  thought  the  course 
finally  adopted  very  unwise,  and  was  one  of  the  large 
majority  to  vote  against  the  motion  of  Calhoun  not  to 
receive  the  Cain  petition,  and  was  probably  among  those 
who  pointed  out  in  advance  that  the  refusal  to  receive 

*  View,  ii.,  pp.  152-154. 


334       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

would  give  the  abolitionists  the  great  advantage  of  stand 
ing  on  the  right  of  petition.  When,  too,  in  1838,  after 
the  crop  of  petitions  of  that  session  had  been  put  aside 
by  good  majorities,  Calhoun  introduced  his  well-known 
series  of  resolutions  upon  the  subject,  insisting  upon  a 
discussion  and  vote  on  the  abstract  question,  despite  the 
general  wish  of  the  Senate  simply  to  get  rid  of  them,  Ben- 
ton  writes  of  the  error  thus  made  of  giving  to  the  agita 
tors  the  floor  of  the  American  Senate  as  a  commanding 
theatre  for  the  dissemination  of  their  doctrines  and  the 
register  of  debates,  instead  of  their  local  papers,  for  an 
organ  of  communication.* 

Although  he  had  himself  at  first  been  very  anxious 
as  to  the  effect  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation  upon  the 
Union,  yet  the  conduct  of  the  overwhelming  majority 
in  the  North  seems  to  have  satisfied  him  for  the  time  that 
there  was  no  real  danger,  and  in  the  "  Thirty  Years' 
View"  he  maintains  more  than  once  that  the  North  was 
in  general  quite  fair  to  the  South  upon  the  subject,  and 
points  out  instances  in  which  they  even  voted  to  increase 
the  area  of  slavery,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  few  and 
despised  abolitionists,  f 

He  always  held  that  the  South  had  one  just  cause  of 
complaint  in  the  tariff  laws,  to  which  he  traces  much  of 
its  relative  decline;  but  he  was  of  opinion  that  about 
1835  the  great  Southern  leaders,  with  a  view  to  consoli 
dating  their  section  and  thus  maintaining  its  power  in 
the  Union,  became  the  chief  agitators,  and  deliberately 
selected  slavery  for  the  purpose  (in  place  of  the  tariff) 
as  being  a  subject  upon  which  all  the  Southern  States 
could  be  kept  united.  And  he  refers  to  expressions  of  a 
later  date  as  showing  that,  as  early  as  1835,  Calhoun 


*  View,  i.,  pp.  612,  etc.,  619;   ii.,  135-140. 

flbid..  i.,  pp.  59,  91,  624,  626,  690,  691.     C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  p.  658, 


FORERUNNERS    OF    SLAVERY    DISPUTES     335 

had  been  urgent  to  "  force  the  issue"  as  to  slavery  upon 
the  North  with  the  avowed  object  of  keeping  the  South 
united  for  the  protection  of  her  sectional  interests.* 

But  at  the  same  time  that  he  thus  disapproved  of  the 
conduct  of  the  South,  he  also  and  equally  disapproved 
of  that  of  the  Northern  agitators  upon  the  subject,  and 
to  the  end  of  his  career  never  ceased  to  deprecate  their 
course.  The  "  personal  liberty  laws,"  as  they  were  called, 
of  a  later  period  found  in  him  a  determined  opponent,  and 
he  always  thought  it  grossly  wrong  that  the  North  should 
pass  such  laws,  as  it  were,  to  fret  and  tease  the  South. 

To  him,  who  knew  the  South  so  well  and  deeply  loved 
the  Union,  this  was  like  destroying  the  very  cement  which 
bound  us  together,  and  he  thought  that,  although  the 
repeal,  for  instance,  by  some  of  the  Northern  States  of 
their  Sojourning  Laws  f  did  not  violate  any  formal 
clause  of  the  Constitution,  yet  it  was  little  short  of  a 
crime,  in  so  close  a  Union  as  ours,  thus  to  render  it  dan 
gerous  for  the  Southerner,  on  a  visit  to  his  brother  or 
medical  adviser  in  the  North,  to  bring  his  children's 
nurses-  or  other  household  slaves  with  him.  This  was  not 
Benton's  idea  of  the  Union,  which  he  thought  should 
rest  on  mutual  confidence  and  affection,  and  in  one  case 
he  well  expressed  his  general  feeling  when  he  denounced 
some  Southern  hints  of  disunion  and  said, J  "  We  should 
no  more  look  ahead  for  causes  of  disunion  than  we  should 
look  ahead  for  causes  of  separation  from  our  wives,  or 
for  the  murder  of  our  mothers." 

With  this  feeling  of  detestation  of  the  Northern  agi- 

*View  i.,  pp.  609-623;    ii.,  pp.  131,  etc.,  698-700. 

fin  Pennsylvania  (as  well  as  other  States),  upon  the  abolition 
of  slavery,  a  proviso  was  inserted  in  the  law  to  allow  non-residents 
sojourning  in  the  State  not  more  than  a  certain  period  to  continue 
to  hold  their  slaves.  This  proviso  was  repealed  in  1847.  For  his 
opinion  as  to  the  personal  liberty  laws,  see  View,  ii.,  p.  777. 

$  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  657. 


336       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

tation  in  his  mind  from  the  day  it  began,  Benton  must 
have  had  many  a  struggle  before  reaching  the  position  he 
finally  occupied,  but  he  was  undoubtedly  slowly  drifting 
away  from  the  South  from  somewhere  about  1835.  In 
deed,  it  was  during  the  session  of  1835-36  that  he  first 
voted  against  the  measures  urged  by  it,  upon  Calhoun' s 
bill  for  the  suppression  of  incendiary  matter  in  the 
mails. 

Bitterly  opposed  though  he  was  to  this  form  of  an 
noyance  of  the  South,  which  he  calls  "  diabolical  work,  as 
injurious  to  the  slaves  by  the  further  restrictions  which 
it  brought  upon  them,  as  to  the  owners  whose  lives  and 
property  were  endangered,"  he  was  yet  so  much  dissat 
isfied  with  the  methods  proposed  to  stop  it  and  the  argu 
ments  on  which  these  methods  were  based  by  Calhoun 
that  he  both  spoke  and  voted  against  the  measure.  "  It 
seemed  to  him,"  he  said,*  "  to  be  going  too  far  to  invest 
ten  thousand  postmasters  with  the  authority  vested  in 
them  by  this  bill,  and  he  could  not  vote  for  it.  The  au 
thority  was  such  an  one  as  would  lead  to  things  they 
might  all  regret.  He  was  very  sorry  to  vote  against  any 
measure  which,  even  in  appearance,  had  for  its  object 
the  suppression  of  so  great  an  evil;  but  he  thought  this 
bill  was  not  calculated  to  effect  that  object." 

The  general  subject  of  the  incendiary  publications  had 
been  called  to  the  attention  of  Congress  by  Jackson,  and 
Calhoun  had  been  appointed  chairman  of  a  special  com 
mittee  upon  the  subject;  but  the  report  he  brought  in  was 
so  largely  based  on  the  same  general  theories  of  our  gov 
ernment  from  which  he  had  deduced  the  doctrine  of  nulli 
fication  that  several  members  felt  compelled  to  express 
their  dissent  from  his  reasons,  and  Benton  wrote  f  years 
afterwards,  in  explanation  of  his  vote  against  the  bill,  that 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  p.  1155. 
t  View,  i.,  pp.  587,  588. 


FORERUNNERS   OF    SLAVERY   DISPUTES    337 

he  was  "  tired  of  the  eternal  cry  of  dissolving  the  Union 
— did  not  believe  in  it — and  would  not  give  a  repugnant 
vote  to  avoid  the  trial."  The  bill  was  defeated  in  the 
Senate  by  a  majority  of  six. 

As  the  years  went  on,  and  in  the  contest  over  slavery 
the  South  drifted  more  and  more  distinctly  towards  a 
separation  from  the  Union,  it  will  be  found  that  Benton 
drew  further  and  further  away.  His  course  in  detail 
will  appear  later,  but  it  had  best  be  said  here  that,  though 
he  had  urged  in  early  life  that  Missouri  should  constitute 
herself  a  slave  State,  he  came  to  be  rather  opposed  to  the 
creation  of  any  new  slave  territory. 

In  the  speech  in  secret  session  in  1844,  which  has 
already  been  quoted  in  part,  after  speaking  of  his  South 
ern  connections  and  of  his  determination  to  share  the  fate 
of  the  South  in  the  abolition  efforts  to  excite  a  servile 
insurrection  among  them,  he  had  gone  on,  "  I  have  my 
eyes  wride  open  to  that  danger,  and  fixed  on  the  labora 
tories  of  insurrection  both  in  Europe  and  America;  but 
I  must  see  a  real  case  of  danger  before  I  take  the  alarm. 
I  am  against  the  cry  of  wolf,  when  there  is  no  wolf.  I 
will  resist  the  intrusive  efforts  of  those  whom  it  does  not 
concern  to  abolish  slavery  among  us ;  but  I  shall  not  en 
gage  in  schemes  for  its  extension  into  regions  where  it 
was  never  known — into  the  valley  of  the  Rio  del  Norte, 
for  example,  along  a  river  of  two  thousand  miles  in  ex 
tent,  where  a  slave's  face  was  never  seen." 

And  in  his  speech  in  Jefferson  City  in  1849,  when 
referring  to  the  fact  that  he  had  always  held  slaves  and 
that  therefore  "  my  profession  and  conduct — no  unusual 
thing  with  frail  humanity — do  not  agree,"  he  said,  "  My 
personal  sentiments,  then,  are  against  the  institution  of 
slavery,  and  against  its  introduction  into  places  in  which 
it  does  not  exist.  If  there  was  no  slavery  in  Missouri 
to-day,  I  should  oppose  its  coming  in ;  if  there  was  none 
in  the  United  States,  I  should  oppose  its  coming  in  to  the 

22 


338       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

United  States ;  as  there  is  none  in  New  Mexico  or  Cali 
fornia,  I  am  against  sending  it  to  those  territories,  and 
could  not  vote  for  such  a  measure." 

At  the  same  time  it  should  be  added  that  his  course 
during  even  the  latest  part  of  his  career  shows  that  these 
opinions  and  determinations  were  by  no  means  settled 
convictions  never  to  be  departed  from,  but  rather  strong 
tendencies  of  his  mind  which  he  thought  expedient  under 
all  the  circumstances.  He  was  at  an  immeasurable  dis 
tance  from  the  position  of  the  abolitionists  and  of  many 
modern  writers,  that  "  anti-slavery"  was  above  all  other 
human  objects,  and  he  would  certainly  never  for  a  mo 
ment  have  consciously  imperilled  the  Union  rather  than 
permit  new  slave  territory  to  be  created. 


CHAPTER      XVIII 
TEXAS — BENTON'S  EARLY  COURSE  IN  REGARD  TO — OPPOSES 

PLAN  FOR  IMMEDIATE  ANNEXATION  IN  1842 DEFEAT 

OF  TYLER'S  TREATY — ENCOUNTER  WITH  M'DUFFIE — 

HIS  PLAN  FOR  SECURING  THE  REAL  TEXAS RISING 

OPPOSITION  TO  HIM  IN  MISSOURI HIGH   COURAGE 

SHOWN  BY  HIM 

BENTON  always  thought  that  the  Florida  treaty  of 
1819  gave  up  claims  of  the  United  States  to  Texas  which 
ought  to  have  been  insisted  upon,  and  as  soon  as  the  basis 
of  the  negotiations  with  Spain  had  become  known,  in 
1818,  he  had  bitterly  opposed  "cutting  off  Texas"  and 
"  dismembering  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  .  .  .  The 
magnificent  valley  of  the  Mississippi,"  he  wrote  in  the 
St.  Louis  Enquirer,  "  is  ours,  with  all  its  fountains, 
springs,  and  floods ;  and  woe  to  the  statesman  who  shall 
undertake  to  surrender  one  drop  of  its  water,  one  inch  of 
its  soil,  to  any  foreign  power."  And  on  October  23  of 
the  next  year  he  wrote  in  the  same  newspaper,  "  As  far 
as  we  can  learn  the  sentiment  of  the  West,  the  feeling  is 
general  for  the  occupation  of  the  Floridas  and  of  the 
country  to  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  if  the  ratification 
[of  the  treaty  by  Spain]  is  not  sent  in  before  the  rise  of 
the  approaching  Congress.  If  war  grows  out  of  these 
measures,  it  will  be  cheerfully  met." 

It  was  a  mystery  to  him  and  many  others  at  that  date 
why  our  claims  were  so  easily  given  up,  but  there  can  be 
no  doubt  to-day  that  the  controlling  reason  was  a  political 
necessity  at  home.  The  North  was  very  restless  at  the 
prospect  of  a  great  empire  growing  up  in  the  South  which 
would  inevitably  lead  in  time  to  an  increase  of  Southern 

339 


340       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

power  in  the  Union,  and  Monroe  knew  that  a  treaty 
giving  us  a  wider  boundary  would  have  failed  in  the 
Senate.* 

These  reasons,  valid  though  they  were  to  Monroe,  and 
even  in  the  end  to  Adams,  who  had  long  held  out  in  the 
Cabinet  for  a  line  farther  to  the  southwest,  would  have 
appealed  little  to  Benton  as  a  Western  man.  And  he  was 
much  pleased  when  he  learned,  early  in  Adams's  admin 
istration,  that  Clay  intended  to  make  efforts  to  purchase 
a  part  of  the  territory  from  Mexico.  Accordingly, 
though,  as  he  wrote,  he  and  Clay  "  were  then  separating 
in  the  new  division  of  political  parties,"  they  had  an  in 
terview  at  which  Benton  promised  his  cordial  co-opera 
tion  in  any  steps  to  recover  Texas;  and  again,  early  in 
Jackson's  administration,  he  was  aware  of  the  proposals 
as  to  Texas  intended  to  be  made  to  Mexico,  and  was  one 
of  those  who  wrote  articles  to  the  newspapers  for  the 
purpose  of  educating  public  sentiment. 

Late  in  the  summer  of  1829  he  addressed  two  letters, 
under  the  signature  of  "  Americanus,"  to  the  St.  Louis 
Beacon,-^  in  which  he  spoke  of  the  idea,  suggested  in  a 

*  Calhoun  said  In  the  Senate  in  1849  (C.G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
p.  499)  that  he  had  learned  confidentially  that  Monroe  had  been  in 
formed  by  Senators  of  the  first  respectability  that  "  the  Senate  would 
not  ratify  a  treaty  with  a  boundary  farther  west"  than  the  Sabine. 
See  also  Schouler's  United  States,  ii.,  pp.  96,  97,  to  the  same  general 
effect,  citing  the  Monroe  MSS.  View,  i.,  p.  15,  etc. 

f  Printed  in  the  issues  of  August  i  and  8,  1829.  The  file  of  the 
St.  Louis  Beacon  in  the  Library  of  Congress  is  incomplete,  and  I 
have  not  been  able  to  see  Nos.  2,  3,  or  7  of  "  La  Salle."  Nos.  i, 
4,  5,  6,  8,  and  9  are  in  the  Beacon  respectively  of  October  7,  17, 
21,  and  24,  and  of  November  4  and  n,  1829.  Portions  of  No.  9  of 
"  La  Salle"  are  reproduced  by  Benton  as  a  supplement  to  a  speech 
in  the  Senate  in  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  656,  657.  Benton 
says  (ibid.,  appendix,  p.  484)  that  "  Americanus"  consisted  of  two 
essays  and  "  La  Salle"  of  nine.  The  speech  or  letter  in  which  Benton 
tells  of  his  interview  with  Clay  is  reprinted  in  Niles's  Register  for 
June  5,  1847,  vol.  Ixxii.,  pp.  222,  223. 


ANNEXATION    OF    TEXAS  341 

Western  newspaper,  "  of  endeavoring  to  obtain  from 
Mexico,  by  friendly  negotiation  and  for  ample  equivalents, 
the  retrocession  of  that  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Missis 
sippi  which  was  ceded  to  the  king  of  Spain  by  the  Florida 
treaty  of  1819."  He  expressed  the  opinion  that  that  ces 
sion  had  been  made  from  motives  hostile  to  the  inde 
pendence  of  Mexico  "  through  subserviency  to  Spain  and 
to  aid  her  in  preserving  her  dominion  over  that  superb 
country,  by  interposing  a  vast  wilderness  to  shut  out  the 
lights  of  republicanism ;"  and  in  the  second  letter  he  added 
that  the  line  agreed  upon  was  an  unnatural  one  and  in 
every  respect  most  disadvantageous. 

These  letters  were  evidently  widely  reproduced  and 
some  writers  expressed  dissent,  so  in  October  and  Novem 
ber  of  the  same  year  Benton  published  in  the  Beacon 
another  series  of  nine  articles,  under  the  signature  of  "La 
Salle,"  in  their  defence.  He  wrote  in  these  of  "  the  south 
western  part  of  Texas,  between  the  bay  of  San  Bernard 
and  the  Rio  del  Norte,"  as  an  arid  desert,  which  "  would 
be  the  actual  limit  of  the  United  States  in  that  direction, 
through  the  Rio  del  Norte  might  be  the  conventional 
boundary  between  the  two  republics." 

And  in  another  of  the  articles,  in  referring  to  the 
Louisiana  purchase  and  its  boundaries,  he  wrote  that 
"  these  boundaries  were  well  known  then  as  now  to  ex 
tend  to  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte  and  to  include  the  entire 
province  of  Texas,"  while  in  still  another  place  he  spoke 
of  "  the  debatable  ground  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rio 
Grande  [as  being]  the  natural  exchangeable  material  in 
the  barter  for  Florida."  At  a  still  earlier  date,  too,  as 
has  been  seen,  he  had  written  in  the  St.  Louis  Enquirer 
of  being  willing  to  waive,  for  the  benefit  of  our  future 
ally,  the  republic  of  Mexico,  our  strict  right  to  the  Rio 
Grande  as  a  boundary. 

These  expressions  are  important,  as  Benton  main 
tained  after  1842  that  Texas  had  no  title  whatsoever  to 


342       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

the  region  in  general  lying  between  the  desert  west  of  the 
Nueces  River  and  the  Rio  Grande;  he  seems  to  have 
been  of  opinion  that  she  did  touch  the  latter  near  the 
coast,  but  did  not  follow  its  course.  It  was  doubtless  in 
evitable  that  Jackson  and  the  advocates  of  annexation  in 
general  should  not  understand  his  views,  but  neither  he 
nor  any  one  else  was  quite  clear  in  1829  as  to  the  proper 
line  of  division,  and  his  articles  show  that  he  had  at  all 
times  been  entirely  willing  to  yield  up  what  he  called 
"the  debatable  ground  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rio 
Grande." 

It  is  also  noteworthy  that  the  main  proposition  made 
at  this  time  by  Jackson — which  was  almost  certainly 
largely  influenced  by  Benton — was  very  closely  the  same 
which,  at  the  time  of  the  Mexican  war,  Benton  insisted 
was  the  true  boundary :  beginning  at  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
it  followed  to  the  north  the  desert  region  west  of  the 
Nueces  River,  and  then  the  mountains  dividing  the  waters 
of  the  Rio  Grande  from  those  flowing  eastward  into  the 
Gulf,  until  it  reached  our  existing  boundary  at  latitude 
42°.  Clay's  main  proposition,  when  Secretary  of  State 
under  Adams,  had  followed  the  middle  lines  of  the  Rio 
Grande  and  of  the  Pecos  (then  the  Puerco)  Rivers  to  the 
source  of  the  latter  and  thence  due  north  to  the  Arkansas 
and  along  its  southern  bank  to  its  source  in  latitude  42° 
and  so  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  As  is  well  known,  both 
propositions  failed  entirely.* 


*  Clay's  proposition  is  to  be  found  in  C.  D.,  vol.  xiv.,  part  2, 
1837,  appendix,  p.  125,  etc.;  and  Jackson's  at  ibid.,  p.  127.  Later 
in  Jackson's  presidency  Forsyth  tried  to  buy  a  vastly  greater  stretch 
of  territory.  His  letter  of  August  6,  1835  (ibid.,  p.  131,  etc.),  to  our 
charge  in  Mexico  told  him  that  we  especially  desired  to  secure  the 
port  of  San  Francisco,  and  proposed  a  boundary  to  follow  the  eastern 
bank  of  the  Rio  Grande  and  then  the  parallel  of  37°  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  Either  Benton  did  not  know  of  this  proposal  (which,  like 
all  the  others,  came  to  naught)  or  he  did  not  choose  to  refer  to  it; 


ANNEXATION   OF   TEXAS  343 

After  this  time  our  public  men  continued  to  watch 
affairs  in  Texas  closely,  but  it  was  not  until  1836,  shortly 
after  the  battle  of  San  Jacinto,  that  any  steps  were  taken 
which  need  be  noticed  here.  That  overwhelming  vic 
tory  of  the  Texans  under  Houston  led  at  once  to  steps 
in  Congress  looking  to  the  recognition  of  Texas,  and  in 
the  debates  upon  this  subject  views  were  expressed  which 
are  very  important  and  which  made  a  profound  impres 
sion  upon  Benton.  It  must  be  remembered  that  at  this 
time  Arkansas  was  in  the  act  of  entering  the  Union  with 
Michigan  as  her  Northern  counterweight,  and  Florida 
was  the  only  region  left  which  there  was  any  likelihood 
would  ask  for  admission  as  a  slave  State. 

Here  was  a  most  serious  problem  for  the  Southern 
leaders,  for,  in  view  of  the  rapidly  growing  abolition  sen 
timent  of  the  North,  they  were  naturally  anxious  at  the 
prospect  that  their  relative  power  was  about  to  begin  rap 
idly  to  dwindle.  It  is  then  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that 
Calhoun,  in  the  debate  on  the  recognition  of  Texas,  went 
vastly  further  than  the  pending  proposal  called  for,  and 
advocated  her  admission  into  the  Union.  He  said  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  on  this  subject,  and  added,  "The 
Southern  States,  owning  a  slave  population,  were  deeply 
interested  in  preventing  that  country  from  having  the 
power  to  annoy  them ;  and  the  navigating  and  manufac 
turing  interests  of  the  North  and  East  were  equally  in 
terested  in  making  it  a  part  of  this  Union.  ...  He  could 
not  but  hope  that  before  the  close  of  the  present  session 
of  Congress,  they  would  not  only  acknowledge  the  inde 
pendence  of  Texas,  but  admit  her  into  the  Union."  Sev 
eral  members  expressed  dissent  from  this  view,  and  Ben- 
ton  not  only  did  this,  but  wrote  later  that  he  saw  in  Cal- 
houn's  speech  "  much  to  be  considered  and  remembered 

nor  have  I  come  across  any  mention  of  it  by  any  one  else  in  the 
Texas  debates  during  the  times  of  Tyler  and  Polk. 


344       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

— the  shadowings  forth  of  coming  events ;  the  revelation 
of  a  new  theatre  for  the  slavery  agitation ;  and  a  design 
to  make  the  Texas  question  an  element  in  the  impending 
[presidential]  election."  * 

Benton  had  by  this  time  already  begun  to  break  away 
from  the  South,  as  has  been  shown  in  the  preceding  chap 
ter,  and  when,  a  few  years  later,  he  again  saw  the  Texas 
question  taken  up  by  Calhoun's  friends,  he  became  con 
vinced  that  the  underlying  design  was  to  secure  the  presi 
dency  for  the  South  Carolinian;  and  as  the  matter  went 
on  and  the  South  grew  very  restless  and  blustering  over 
the  delay  in  annexation,  he  thought  he  saw  in  it  all  a 
distinct  alternative  plan  to  break  up  the  Union  and  form 
a  Southern  confederacy  with  Texas  as  one  of  its  mem 
bers.  He  tells  at  great  length  how  in  the  winter  of  1842- 
43,  from  the  appearance  of  the  well-known  Gilmer  letter 
in  favor  of  annexation,  he  watched  this  plan  and  studied 
to  find  out  what  was  really  behind  it,  and  soon  convinced 
himself  that  it  was  primarily  a  move  for  the  presidency  on 
Calhoun's  behalf. 

The  consequence  was  that,  when  warmly  greeted  by  a 
fellow-member  on  the  first  day  of  the  session  of  1843-44 
as  a  man  who  had  always  been  so  prominent  an  advocate 
of  Texas,  and  told  how  imminent  and  necessary  annexa 
tion  was,  he  says  that  he  took  fire  at  the  words  and  an 
swered  abruptly  and  hotly  "  that  it  was  on  the  part  of 
some  an  intrigue  for  the  presidency  and  a  plot1  to  dissolve 
the  Union — on  the  part  of  others  a  Texas  scrip  and  land 
speculation ;  and  that  I  was  against  it." 

He  continued  to  watch  the  steps  taken  by  the  advo 
cates  of  annexation,  and  certainly  showed  no  little  apti 
tude  in  ferreting  out  the  real  basis  of  a  series  of  move 
ments  which  were  by  no  means  intended  to  be  understood 

,  *  View,  i.,  p.  667.     Calhoun's  speech  advocating  the  admission  of 
Texas  is  to  be  found  in  C  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  2,  1835-36,  p.  153. 


ANNEXATION    OF    TEXAS  345 

by  him  or  any  other  outsider.  The  evidence  of  history 
shows  to-day  that  Calhoun  was  at  this  time  pushed  by  his 
friends  for  the  presidency  and  was  himself  possessed  by 
the  idea  that  he  was  the  coming  man,  that  the  movement 
for  Texas  was  hoped  to  be  the  means  of  nominating  and 
electing  him,  and  that  it  was  his  friends  who  brought 
about  in  his  interest  the  postponement  of  the  Democratic 
convention ;  and,  however  vague  may  have  been  the  plans 
of  disunion,  there  can  be  no  doubt  they  were  in  the  minds 
of  some  Southern  leaders  as  a  quite  possible  contingency. 
Benton's  conclusions,  too,  as  to  the  way  the  plan  was 
worked  up  and  how  letters  were  secured  by  roundabout 
means  from  various  leaders  and  then  passed  around  in 
secret  among  the  initiated  until  the  favorable  moment 
should  come  to  spring  the  plan  upon  the  public,  were  by 
no  means  without  foundation.* 

That  Benton's  opposition  to  the  whole  matter  was 
influenced  by  his  dislike  and  distrust  of  Calhoun  cannot 
be  doubted ;  nor  was  this  feeling  lessened  when  Calhoun 
declined  to  be  a  candidate  before  the  convention ;  for  not 
only  did  the  South  Carolinian  soon  enter  the  Cabinet  as 
Secretary  of  State,  and  thus  occupy  a  position  where  he 
would  largely  manage  the  whole  proceeding,  but  there 
was,  moreover,  a  possibility  that  Tyler  might  be  nomi 
nated,  and  upon  him  also  Benton  looked  with  great  dis 
favor,  considering  that  his  whole  political  course  had  been 
doubtful,  and  that  he  had  not  only  recently  deserted  the 
Democrats,  but  was  now  ready  in  turn,  in  the  pursuit  of 
his  own  interests,  to  desert  the  Whigs. 

*  View,  ii.,  p.  581  et  seq.  Calhoun's  Correspondence,  passim ;  I 
have  noted  pages  497,  501-503,  509,  5io,  512,  515,  516,  519,  525,  537, 
538,  Virgil  Maxcy's  letter  of  December  10,  1843,  to  Calhoun,  p.  903  ; 
Thomas  W.  Gilmer's  letter  of  December  13,  1843,  to  Calhoun,  p. 
904 ;  Calhoun's  letter  of  December  25,  1843,  to  Gilmer,  p.  559.  Diary 
of  Charles  J.  Ingersoll,  printed  in  his  Life  by  William  M.  Meigs, 
p.  259,  etc. 


346       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

Benton  was  undoubtedly  thus  quite  ready  to  enter 
upon  a  course  of  opposition;  and  when  the  actual  plans 
became  known  from  Tyler's  treaty,  and  he  saw  an  effort 
to  grasp  an  enormous  area  from  Mexico,  he  was  bitterly 
opposed  to  thus  exciting  distrust  among  the  Mexicans 
and  almost  certainly  entering  upon  a  war  with  them.  The 
consequence  was — as  we  have  already  seen  was  later  the 
case  in  regard  to  Oregon — that  he  was  soon  entirely  dis 
tanced  by  the  newer  Texas  advocates  and  felt  compelled 
to  a  course  of  action  which  looked  on  the  surface  like  an 
abandonment  of  a  policy  he  had  favored  during  his  whole 
mature  life. 

The  treaty  to  annex  Texas  which  Tyler  had  been  for 
some  time  negotiating,  and  which  was  signed  a  very  short 
time  after  Calhoun  entered  the  Cabinet,  was  sent  to  the 
Senate  on  April  22,  1844,  and  Benton  began  at  once  a 
bitter  opposition.  On  April  29  his  reply  to  a  letter  from 
members  of  the  Texan  Congress  was  published  in  the 
Daily  Globe,  in  which  while  he  said  he  would  be  glad  to 
see  "the  old  Texas"  fulfil  her  inevitable  destiny  of  re 
union  with  us,  he  at  the  same  time  expressed  entire  dis 
approval,  under  the  existing  circumstances,  of  annexing 
Texas  with  the  limits  she  claimed  for  herself.  And  in 
secret  session  in  the  Senate  he  introduced  resolutions  to 
the  effect  that  the  adoption  of  the  treaty  would  be  an 
adoption  of  the  war  between  Texas  and  Mexico,  and  that 
the  treaty-making  power  did  not  extend  to  making  war, 
and  he  then  made  a  three  days'  speech  reviewing  the 
whole  subject. 

He  showed  that  he  had  always  advocated  the  recovery 
of  what  he  called  the  real  Texas,  the  territory  geograph 
ically  appurtenant  to  the  United  States,  and  said  that  he 
washed  his  hands  of  "  all  attempts  to  dismember  the 
Mexican  republic  by  seizing  her  dominions  in  New 
Mexico,  Chihuahua,  Coahuila,  and  Tamaulipas.  The 
treaty,  in  all  that  relates  to  the  boundary  of  the  Rio 


ANNEXATION    OF   TEXAS  34? 

Grande,  is  an  act  of  unparalleled  outrage  on  Mexico.  It 
is  the  seizure  of  two  thousand  miles  of  her  territory  with 
out  a  word  of  explanation  with  her,  and  by  virtue  of  a 
treaty  with  Texas  to  which  she  is  no  party."  After 
elaborating  the  entire  difference  between  the  pending  pro 
posal  and  those  made  in  the  past,  he  went  on  upon  "  his 
responsibility  as  a  senator  ...  in  attributing  so  grave  a 
crime  to  this  administration"  to  charge  that  the  whole 
scheme  was  a  selfish  move  to  capture  the  presidency. 
Making  motions  for  a  number  of  calls  for  information 
from  the  President,  intended  to  bring  from  the  public  rec 
ords  the  truth  of  this  charge,  he  inveighed  in  particular 
against  a  promise  which  he  said  Calhoun  had  extracted 
from  Archer,  the  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign 
Relations,  that  the  treaty  should  not  be  reported  back  to 
the  Senate  from  the  committee  for  forty  days. 

The  purpose  of  this  scheme,  he  said,  was  to  bring 
the  treaty  before  the  public — in  the  phrase  of  the  day  "  to 
explode  the  Texas  bomb" — well  in  time  with  the  Demo 
cratic  presidential  convention,  which  was  to  meet  in 
thirty-eight  days,  and  it  was  only  prevented  by  the  re 
fusal  of  the  Senate  to  wait  for  the  time  agreed  upon.  It 
was  by  virtue  of  this  refusal,  he  went  on,  that  they  had 
learned  of  the  movements  of  our  army  and  of  the  Presi 
dent's  determination  to  act  in  all  respects  as  if  the  treaty 
were  actually  in  force,  until  it  should  be  rejected.  In  con 
clusion,  and  of  course  in  view  of  the  well-known  fact  that 
there  was  the  strongest  sentiment  in  Missouri  for  annexa 
tion,  he  said  he  did  not  know  whether  the  people  in  his 
State  were  in  favor  of  getting  Texas  back  on  the  terms 
which  the  pending  treaty  proposed,  and  then  went  on : 

"  If  they  were,  and  I  knew  it,  I  should  resign  my  place ;  for  I 
could  neither  violate  their  known  wishes  in  voting  against  it,  nor 
violate  my  own  sense  of  constitutional  and  moral  duty  in  voting  for 
it.  Twenty-four  years  I  have  sat  in  this  chamber,  and  have  had 
the  gratification,  all  the  time,  and  especially  on  many  trying  occa- 


348       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

sions,  when  I  voted  on  my  own  convictions,  to  give  satisfaction  to 
my  constituents.  If  it  should  be  otherwise  now,  it  would  be  a  source 
of  deep  regret  to  me;  but,  with  my  opinions  of  this  treaty,  it  is 
impossible  for  me  to  support  it;  and  if  the  alternative  should  be 
the  extinction  of  my  political  life,  I  should  have  to  embrace  it." 

Some  of  the  calls  for  information  which  the  Senate 
made  on  Benton's  motion  were  probably  in  a  high  degree 
inconvenient  to  the  Executive,  and  replies  to  them  were 
so  slow  in  coming  in  that  on  June  I  he  was  on  the  floor  * 
complaining  of  this,  when  an  answer  came  at  last,  show 
ing  clearly  that  the  Cabinet  had  only  reluctantly  and  at 
the  last  moment,  under  compulsion  from  the  Texas  au 
thorities,  agreed  to  their  sine  qua  non  that  our  army  and 
navy  should  at  once  (i.e.,  before  ratification)  be  used  for 
the  protection  of  the  Texans.  As  such  a  promise  had 
been  suspected,  and  as  Benton  had  maintained  that  there 
would  then  be  an  end  of  the  treaty, — for  he  insisted  that 
no  one  could  possibly  admit  that  the  President  alone 
could  involve  the  country  in  a  war, — his  point  was 
largely  gained,  and  he  moved  to  take  off  the  injunction  of 
secrecy  and  then  sat  down,  saying  triumphantly,  in  the 
language  of  a  Spanish  proverb  then  in  vogue,  "  The  devil 
is  now  pulled  from  under  the  blanket." 

It  is  no  wonder  that  after  this  the  treaty,  instead  of 
receiving  the  requisite  two-thirds  majority,  was  defeated 
by  a  vote  of  sixteen  yeas  to  thirty-five  nays.  The  injunc 
tion  of  secrecy  was  removed,  and  two  days  later  Benton 
moved  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  for  annexation  in  his 
sense,  f  His  bill  proposed  to  authorize  the  President  to 
enter  into  negotiations  with  Mexico  and  Texas  for  the 
annexation  of  the  latter,  with  a  boundary  made  up  of  the 
desert  west  of  the  Nueces  and  of  the  highlands  dividing 


*  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  497-499.     His  speech  quoted 
in  the  text  is  to  be  found  in  ibid.,  appendix,  pp.  474-486. 
flbid.,  28th  Cong.,   ist  Sess.,  pp.  652-657. 


ANNEXATION    OF   TEXAS  349 

the  waters  of  the  Mississippi  from  those  of  the  Rio 
Grande;  and  slavery  was  to  be  prohibited  in  the  north 
ern  parts  of  the  territory  concerned,  so  as  to  divide  the 
region  about  equally  between  slave-holding  and  non- 
slave-holding  States. 

This  proposal  and  Benton's  activity  in  defeating  the 
treaty  led  in  a  few  days  to  a  sharp  collision  between  him 
and  McDuffie,  which  excited  a  great  deal  of  public  notice 
at  the  time  and  is  still  interesting  as  showing  that,  seven 
teen  years  before  the  Civil  War,  Benton  saw  very  clearly 
in  what  direction  the  course  of  the  Southern  members 
was  driving  them.  Benton  had  criticised  Tyler  severely 
for  making  what  he  called  an  appeal  from  the  Senate 
to  the  House,  meaning  the  sending  of  the  rejected  treaty 
to  the  House  and  in  effect  calling  upon  it  to  do  by  joint 
resolution  what  the  Senate  had  declined  to  do  by  treaty, 
while  McDuffie  in  reply  defended  Tyler  and  attacked 
Benton  warmly.  The  latter  arose  at  once,  evidently 
under  great  excitement,  and  continuing  McDuffie's  last 
sentence,  finished  it  in  a  way  to  show  the  essential  dif 
ference  of  their  positions.  In  the  course  of  his  speech 
he  said : 

'•'  The  Senator  from  South  Carolina  complains  that  I  have  been 
arrogant  and  overbearing  in  this  debate,  and  dictatorial  to  those  who 
were  opposed  to  me.  So  far  as  this  reproach  is  founded,  I  have  to 
regret  it,  and  to  ask  pardon  of  the  Senate  and  of  its  members.  I 
may  be  in  some  fault.  I  have,  indeed,  been  laboring  under  deep  feel 
ing;  and  while  much  was  kept  down,  something  may  have  escaped. 
I  marked  the  commencement  of  this  Texas  movement  long  before  it 
was  visible  to  the  public  eye;  and  always  felt  it  to  be  dangerous, 
because  it  gave  to  the  plotters  the  honest  sympathies  of  the  millions. 
I  saw  men  who  never  cared  a  straw  about  Texas — one  of  whom  gave 
it  away  [Calhoun,  in  Monroe's  Cabinet] — another  of  whom  voted 
against  saving  it  [Tyler,  on  Clay's  resolutions  in  1820] — and  all  of 
whom  were  silent  and  indifferent  while  the  true  friends  of  the  sacri 
ficed  country  were  laboring  to  get  it  back.  I  saw  these  men  lay  their 
plot  in  the  winter  of  1842-43,  and  told  every  person  with  whom  I 
talked  every  step  they  were  to  take  in  it.  All  that  has  taken  place, 


350       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

I  foretold ;  all  that  is  intended,  I  foresee.  The  intrigue  for  the  presi 
dency  was  the  first  act  in  the  drama;  the  dissolution  of  the  Union 
the  second.  And  I,  who  hate  intrigue  and  love  the  Union,  can  only 
speak  of  intriguers  and  disunionists  with  warmth  and  indignation. 
The  oldest  advocate  for  the  recovery  of  Texas,  I  must  be  allowed  to 
speak  in  just  terms  of  the  criminal  politicians  who  prostituted  the 
question  of  its  recovery  to  their  own  base  purposes,  and  delayed  its 
success  by  degrading  and  disgracing  it.  ... 

"  The  Senator  from  South  Carolina  compares  the  rejected  treaty 
to  the  slain  Caesar,  and  gives  it  a  ghost,  which  is  to  meet  me  at 
some  future  day,  as  the  spectre  met  Brutus  at  Philippi.  I  accept  the 
comparison,  and  thank  the  Senator  for  it.  It  is  both  classic  and  just; 
for  as  Caesar  was  slain  for  the  good  of  his  country,  so  has  been  this 
treaty;  and  as  the  spectre  appeared  at  Philippi  on  the  side  of  the 
ambitious  Antony  and  the  hypocrite  Octavius,  and  against  the 
patriot  Brutus,  so  would  the  ghost  of  this  poor  treaty,  when  it  comes 
to  meet  me,  appear  on  the  side  of  the  President  and  his  secretary, 
and  against  the  man  who  was  struggling  to  save  his  country  from 
their  lawless  designs.  But  here  the  comparison  must  stop ;  for  I 
can  promise  the  ghost  and  his  backers  that  if  the  fight  goes  against 
me  at  this  new  Philippi  with  which  I  am  threatened,  and  the  enemies 
of  the  American  Union  triumph  over  me  as  the  enemies  of  Roman 
liberty  triumphed  over  Brutus  and  Cassius,  I  shall  not  fall  upon  my 
sword,  as  Brutus  did,  though  Cassius  be  killed,  and  run  it  through 
my  own  body ;  but  I  shall  save  it,  and  save  myself  for  another  day, 
and  for  another  use — for  the  day  when  the  battle  of  the  disunion  of 
these  States  is  to  be  fought — not  with  words,  but  with  iron — and 
for  the  hearts  of  the  traitors  who  appear  in  arms  against  their 
country."  * 

John  Quincy  Adams  was  in  the  Senate  on  this  oc 
casion,  and  writes  f  that  he  "  found  McDuffie  closing  a 

*  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  610.  The  speech  of 
McDuffie,  to  which  this  was  in  reply,  is  to  be  found  at  ibid.,  p.  588, 
etc.,  and  Benton's  earlier  speech  at  ibid.,  p.  568,  etc.  The  very 
short  final  reply  of  McDuffie  to  Benton  is  in  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  p.  688. 

f  Diary,  xii.  p.  56.  The  newspaper  articles  referred  to  are  to  be 
found  in  Niles's  Register,  vol.  Ixvi.,  pp.  272,  295.  Adams  says 
nothing  of  having  shaken  hands  with  Benton,  while  one  of  the  news 
paper  correspondents  adds  that,  as  Benton  later  left  the  hall,  he 


ANNEXATION   OF   TEXAS  351 

violent  and  rancorous  speech  against  Thomas  Hart  Ben- 
ton  and  his  bill  for  the  annexation  of  Texas.  .  .  .  Mc- 
Duffie's  speech  was  unsparing  upon  Benton,  and  his  reply 
of  about  one  hour  was  so  merciless  and  personal  that 
nothing  but  bodily  fear  could  have  withheld  the  hand  of 
McDuffie  from  a  challenge,  but  he  put  up  with  it,  quiet 
as  a  lamb."  At  least  two  newspaper  correspondents  of 
the  day  refer  to  the  incident  as  having  been  most  dra 
matic  and  as  threatening  a  breach  of  the  peace,  and  add 
that  at  the  close  of  Benton's  speech  Adams  went  up  to  him 
and  shook  his  hand  warmly.  One  says  that  McDuffie 
fairly  writhed  at  the  charges  of  disunion  and  nullification, 
adds  that  Benton  began  in  "  a  low  tone  of  voice,  not  al 
ways  distinctly  audible  across  the  house,  which  he  con 
tinued  to  the  end,  except  in  those  occasional  and  emphatic 
bursts,  which  are  so  peculiar  to  himself,"  and  then  speaks 
of  his  turning  fiercely  on  McDuffie  at  one  time  and  of 
"  the  way  he  thumped  upon  the  desk,  and  gesticulated, 
and  flourished  in  the  face  of  Mr.  McDuffie,  who  sat  im 
mediately  under  and  looking  at  him." 

In  the  early  part  of  the  next  session  Benton  once  more 
introduced  his  bill  to  authorize  negotiations  with  Mexico 
and  Texas,  and  also  introduced  other  resolutions  of  in 
quiry;  but  late  in  the  session  (February  5),  when  the 
inauguration  of  Polk  was  to  occur  within  a  month,  he 
proposed  a  new  and  much  modified  bill,  providing  for  ne 
gotiations,  but  not  specifying  in  words  that  any  such 
should  be  held  with  Mexico.  Doubtless  this  measure 
was  somewhat  inspired  by  a  desire  to  head  off,  as  far  as 
he  could,  the  rising  opposition  to  himself  in  Missouri,  and 
it  was  in  close  accord  with  the  resolutions  of  the  General 
Assembly  of  Missouri  which  he  had  presented  to  the  Sen- 
turned  around  to  shake  hands  with  Adams,  who  was  sitting  behind 
him,  and  said,  "  Mr.  Adams,  you  are  passing  off  the  stage,  and  I  am 
passing  away  also,  but  while  we  live,  we  will  stand  by  the  Union." 


352       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ate  on  January  20.  He  was  able  to  approve  these  resolu 
tions,  and  so  was  Atchison  (his  fellow-Senator  and  a 
leader  among  his  opponents),  but  I  cannot  think  they 
were  drawn  as  either  would  have  wanted. 

It  is  plain  that  in  all  his  opposition  to  the  Texas 
schemes,  up  to  nearly  the  end  of  Tyler's  administration, 
Benton  was  determined  that  the  settlement  of  the  matter 
should  be  postponed  until  after  March  4,  1845.  Indeed, 
this  was  probably  one  of  his  chief  motives  throughout 
the  whole  proceeding,  and  he  thought  his  purpose  at 
tained  when  he  introduced  his  much  modified  bill  on  Feb 
ruary  5.  He  even  explained  that  it  was  apparent  now 
that  the  matter  must  devolve  upon  the  new  President,  and 
then  went  on  to  express  his  confidence  in  Polk;  and, 
when  another  member  offered  Benton's  original  bill  as  a 
substitute  for  the  House  joint  resolution  then  pending, 
Benton  said  from  his  seat  that  he  would  vote  against  it, 
and  in  reply  to  a  hope  expressed  that  he  would  not  kill 
his  own  child,  answered,  "  I'll  kill  it  stone  dead."  * 

It  was  late  in  the  session  when  the  joint  resolution 
from  the  House  admitting  Texas  into  the  Union  at  once 
became  the  chief  measure  upon  the  subject  before  the  Sen 
ate,  and  Benton  and  a  few  others  were  well  known  to 
have  the  power  to  delay  or  defeat  it.  Finally,  in  pursu 
ance  of  some  arrangement,  Walker  moved  an  amendment 
in  effect  adding,  as  an  alternative  course  of  action  for  the 
President,  Benton's  later  bill  for  admission  after  negotia 
tions,  and  Benton  and  his  friends  then  voted  for  the  joint 
resolution,  which  passed  both  Houses. 

Benton  insists  that  it  was  well  understood  that  Polk 
had  agreed  in  advance  to  adopt  the  plan  of  negotiation 
in  preference  to  that  of  immediate  annexation,  and  that 

*  Benton's  more  important  actions  at  this  session  in  regard  to 
Texas  are  to  be  found  in  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  19,  39, 
43,  154,  244,  362. 


ANNEXATION    OF    TEXAS  353 

friends  of  Calhoun  and  Tyler  had  strongly  intimated  that 
the  then  administration  would  leave  the  matter  over  for 
Folk's  action ;  so  that,  according  to  him,  he  and  his  friends 
were  "cheated  out  of  their  votes  ...  by  a  fraud;"* 
while  Calhoun  said  later  that  Benton's  plan  had  been 
added  as  an  amendment,  not  with  any  idea  of  acting  on 
it,  but  because  Benton  and  a  few  others  had  the  power 
to  embarrass  the  passage  of  the  resolutions,  and  therefore 
it  was  necessary  merely  so  as  to  gratify  him  and  them. 
It  will  be  remembered  that,  late  on  the  night  of  March 
2,  Tyler  and  Calhoun  dispatched  a  messenger  with  the 
resolution  for  immediate  annexation  as  the  selected 
course  of  action. 

Benton's  course  upon  the  Texas  question  had  been  too 
much  opposed  to  the  popular  wish  in  Missouri  not  to 
meet  with  condemnation,  and  it  is  evident  that  a  veritable 
hue  and  cry  was  raised  against  him  before  he  came  up  for 
re-election  to  the  Senate  in  the  autumn  of  1844.  He 
charged  later  f  in  debate  that  this  opposition  had  been  in 
stigated  by  friends  of  Calhoun  and  Tyler,  and  quoted  a 
confidential  circular  letter  \vhich  he  evidently  thought 
came  from  them,  in  which  editors  were  advised  to  "  con 
fine  yourself  to  attacks  upon  Benton,  showing  that  he  has 

*  View,  ii.,  p.  634,  etc.  Benton's  proof  of  this  whole  matter  is, 
however,  decidedly  weak.  The  letters  of  Tappan  and  Blair,  which 
he  relies  upon  to  a  considerable  extent,  were  not  published  until  the 
summer  of  1848  (more  than  three  years  after  the  event),  and  Polk 
complains  that  their  belated  publication  was  an  after-thought  and 
really  intended  to  help  Van  Buren  in  the  presidential  contest  then 
pending.  Polk  and  Buchanan,  moreover,  agreed  that  the  facts  were 
not  at  all  as  Tappan  and  Blair  alleged  and  that  no  pledge  whatsoever 
had  been  given.  (Folk's  Diary  for  July  31  and  August  3,  1848.)  The 
letters  of  Tappan  and  Blair  seem  to  have  been  printed  in  the  New 
York  Evening  Post  of  July  28,  1848,  and  see  ibid,  of  August  2.  For 
Calhoun's  speech  upon  the  subject,  see  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
p.  499. 

t  C.  G.,  29th  Cong..  2d  Sess.,  pp.  497,  562,  563. 

23 


354       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

allied  himself  with  the  Whigs  on  the  Texas  question. 
Quote  Jackson's  letter  on  Texas,  where  he  denounces  all 
those  as  traitors  to  the  country  who  oppose  the  treaty. 
Apply  it  to  Benton." 

In  consequence  of  these  instructions,  Benton  went  on, 
"  three  hundred  newspapers  in  the  pay  of  the  Department 
of  State,  many  of  them  not  visibly  so,"  took  up  the  cry 
against  him  and  harped  on  it,  especially  in  Missouri.  It 
was  said  of  him  by  them  that  he  was  a  "  Traitor  —  Whig 
—  Clay  man  —  Mexican  —  British  —  deserter  —  enemy  to  the 
country  —  that  he  had  lost  his  senses  since  he  was  blown 
up  in  the  explosion  on  the  Princeton,  etc.,  etc."  But, 
while  the  "  rottens,"  as  he  called  his  opponents,  thus 
abused  him,  "  he  said  nothing.  Proud,  erect,  silent, 
scornful,  he  let  the  dogs  bark  on,  trusting  to  the  people 
of  Missouri  to  bear  him  harmless  through  the  attack,  and 
to  a  just  Providence  to  bring  a  day  of  retribution  to  the 
true  assailants.  He  had  not  been  deceived  in  either  de 
pendence.  The  people  of  Missouri  saved  him  in  1844; 
Providence  had  given  him  a  day  of  retribution  now  in 


To  explain  the  last  reference,  it  is  necessary  to  say 
that  in  1844,  in  his  speech  against  the  treaty,  Benton 
intimated  that  Jackson  had  been  misled  into  writing  his 
letter  in  favor  of  immediate  annexation,  while  Jackson 
had  written  at  about  the  same  time  that  "  Benton's  posi 
tion  is  inexplicable,"  and  is  said  later  to  have  sent  a  mes 
sage  of  strong  disapproval  to  him,  and  to  have  shared  the 
view  that  Benton  was  deranged  by  the  explosion  of  the 
gun  on  the  Princeton.*  In  reply  to  all  this  froth,  and 

*  Letter  of  Jackson  to  William  B.  Lewis,  dated  June  28,  1844, 
quoted  in  Bulletin  of  New  York  Public  Library,  vol.  iv.  (No.  9, 
September,  1900),  p.  308.  Letter  of  F.  W.  Pickens  to  Calhoun,  dated 
September  9,  1844,  printed  in  Calhoun's  Correspondence,  p.  969. 
The  letter  reads  by  the  explosion  of  the  "  game,"  but  this  is  certainly 
an  error.  See  also  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  497,  562, 
563. 


ANNEXATION    OF    TEXAS  355 

after  its  bubbles  had  burst  with  the  lapse  of  time,  Benton 
sent  a  kindly  message  to  Jackson  by  Major  Lewis  in  1846, 
and  received  a  very  kind  and  admiring  remembrance  in 
reply,  part  of  which  he  read  in  the  Senate  on  the  present 
occasion. 

It  is  evident  that  this  fierce  attack  on  Benton  had 
its  effect  in  Missouri  as  well  as  far  and  wide  throughout 
the  country.  In  South  Carolina  one  of  the  sentiments 
given  at  a  public  dinner  was  "  Thomas  H.  Benton — he 
has  recently  basely  deserted  the  honor  and  the  interests 
of  his  country,  and  from  bad  motives ;  that  country  will 
never  forgive  it  or  forget  it."  And  in  Missouri  his  ene 
mies  probably  hoped  to  beat  him, — Buchanan  feared  that 
they  might  succeed,* — and  in  the  election,  there  being 
two  vacancies  to  be  filled  ( Benton's  own  and  that  caused 
by  the  death  of  Linn)  Benton  received  only  seventy- four 
votes,  while  Atchison  had  one  hundred  and  one.  I  can 
not  but  suspect,  too,  that  the  Missouri  resolutions,  which, 
it  has  been  shown,  he  presented  at  this  session  of  Con 
gress,  were  in  reality  the  outgrowth  of  opposition  to  him, 
and  that  his  friends  at  home  had  succeeded  with  diffi 
culty  in  bringing  them  to  a  shape  in  which  he  could  sup 
port  them. 

Doubtless  it  was  in  no  small  degree  the  feeling  of 
growing  isolation  that  led  him  to  enter  into  relations  with 
John  Quincy  Adams.  At  the  time  that  the  latter  made 
his  statement  in  the  House  as  to  the  negotiations  for  the 
treaty  of  1819,  Benton  had  sent  a  message  to  him  through 
a  friend,  and  later — as  has  been  shown — openly  took  back 
all  his  charges  in  that  matter.  Probably  Adams  next 
complimented  him  upon  his  speech  against  McDuffie,  and 
on  January  3,  1845,  Benton  visited  Adams — the  first  time 
"  in  a  period  of  twenty-five  years  of  a  common  residence 

*  Curtis's  Buchanan,  i.,  p.  512.  The  sentiment  against  Benton  is 
taken  from  Niles's  Register,  vol.  Ixvi.  (July  6,  1844),  p.  290. 


356       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

of  him  and  me  in  this  city" — and  the  latter  soon  returned 
the  visit.* 

Here,  so  far  as  I  know,  their  relations  in  life  ended; 
for,  though  both  might  admire  points  in  the  character  of 
the  other,  they  were  too  different  to  be  friends.  Benton 
was  constantly,  in  hot  blood,  denouncing  his  enemies  in 
the  most  violent  language,  as  nearly  all  men  do;  but 
this  is  usually  mere  froth  and  dies  in  the  utterance,  and 
he  could  have  little  in  common  with  a  man  who  went 
home  and  there  alone  and  in  cold  blood  daily  poured  out 
on  paper  the  most  gross  abuse  of  nearly  all  his  contempo 
raries.  What  more  absurd  than  for  this  diarist  to  write 
of  Benton  as  a  man  whose  character  "  is  more  of  the 
Cethegus  class  than  any  other  man  I  know  in  this  coun 
try,"  and,  again,  as  "  a  liar  of  magnitude  beyond  the 
reach  of  Ferdinand  Mendez  Pinto !"  f  and  all  this  dis 
tillate  of  gall  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  Benton  assumed 
that  the  Secretary  of  State  and  actual  negotiator  of  the 
Florida  treaty  was  the  person  in  the  main  responsible  for 
its  terms. 

If  the  reader  will  stop  and  consider  Benton's  position 
and  actions  at  about  this  time,  he  cannot  fail  to  accord 
to  him  a  degree  of  courage  rarely  seen.  Finding  himself 
out  of  accord  with  his  party  and  with  the  well-nigh  uni 
versal  sentiment  in  his  State  upon  a  subject  he  thought  of 


*  Diary,  xiii.,  p.  140.  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix, 
p.  483. 

f  Diary,  vii.,  p.  173,  and  viii.,  p.  186.  Hosts  of  just  such  intem 
perate  criticisms  of  his  contemporaries  could  be  cited  from  Adams's 
Diary;  lawyers  will,  e.g.,  be  surprised  to  hear  Pennsylvania's  great 
Chief-Justice  Gibson  spoken  of  with  dread  as  "  precisely  the  most 
unfit  man  for  the  office  [a  seat  on  the  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States]  in  the  Union."  Ibid.,  viii.,  p.  174.  See  also 
Adams's  belief  that  he  was  pursued  at  Harvard  College  and  through 
out  life  by  "the  devices  of  rivals  to  ruin  him,"  of  whom  he  names 
thirteen.  Ibid.,  ix.,  p.  263. 


ANNEXATION    OF   TEXAS  357 

great  importance,  he  did  not  hesitate  for  a  moment,  on 
the  very  eve  of  coming  up  for  re-election,  to  enter  upon 
an  open  and  most  active  opposition  to  the  Texas  policy, 
and  soon  bore  on  his  shoulders  all  the  burden  of  a  furious 
attack  against  him.  Never  a  man  of  great  popularity,  he 
was  reviled  as  a  traitor  and  renegade  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other,  and  especially  in  the  South,  which  he 
then  still  looked  upon  as  his  home.  In  the  South  his 
name  became  a  favorite  one  to  couple  with  toasts  and 
sentiments  charging  him  with  many  of  the  worst  sins 
man  can  be  guilty  of;  and  I  do  not  think  there  can  be 
,any  doubt  that  the  opposition  in  Missouri  to  his  re-elec 
tion  was  strong  enough  very  seriously  to  endanger  for 
a  time  his  political  future.  I  have  studied  his  course 
upon  the  Texas  question  in  vain,  if  it  can  be  said  of  him 
that  all  this  caused  him  to  hesitate  during  the  hottest  part 
of  the  contest. 

At  the  time  of  his  re-election  by  the  Legislature  (No 
vember,  1844)  he  was  about  at  the  high-water  mark  of 
i  his  opposition,  and  it  was  only  several  months  afterwards, 
when  those  he  had  no  confidence  in  were  about  to  retire 
from  the  control  of  affairs,  that  he  was  beyond  doubt 
"  easy"  in  accepting  evidence  that  the  alternative  plan  of 
annexation  would  be  left  to  the  action  of  the  incoming 
administration.  Nor  does  the  matter  end  here,  for  hardly 
was  Polk  in  office  before  Benton  was  arrayed  in  opposi 
tion  to  the  other  leading  Democratic  measure  of  securing 
"  all  of  Oregon."  This  again  was  most  specially  popular 
in  Missouri,  and  yet  his  opposition  to  it  was  most  out 
spoken  and  he  was  undoubtedly  the  one  man  who  in  the 
main  defeated  it. 


CHAPTER     XIX 

THE  FINAL  ADMISSION  OF  TEXAS — BENTON  OPPOSED  TO 

WAR  WITH  MEXICO HIS  PLAN  FOR  CONDUCTING  THE 

WAR THE  LIEUTENANT-GENERAL  BILL APPOINTED 

MAJOR-GENERAL,    BUT   RESIGNS  -   •   SANTA   ANNA'S 

AGENT,,  ATOCHA  THE  WILMOT  PROVISO  BITTER 

CONTESTS  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES THE 

CLAYTON  COMPROMISE THE  OREGON  BILL  FINALLY 

PASSED  —  BENTON'S  CLASHES  WITH  CALHOUN  — 
EFFORT  TO  NULLIFY  THE  MEXICAN  TREATY  BY  THE 
PROTOCOL 

THOUGH  Benton  had  evidently  but  a  poor  opinion  of 
Polk  and  his  Cabinet,  regarding  them  as  very  indirect  and 
addicted  to  silly  intrigues  sure  of  failure,  yet  the  first  two 
years  at  least  of  the  administration  we  are  now  entering 
upon  were  -again  ones  in  which  he  had  no  little  influence 
with  the  Executive,  and  he  was  constantly  consulted  by 
them — but  often  told  only  one-half  of  the  actual  state  of 
affairs,  while  mysterious  terms  veiled  the  balance.  It  has 
been  already  shown  how  great  an  aid  he  was  in  the  Ore 
gon  negotiations,  and  we  shall  now  find  that  during  the 
progress  of  the  Mexican  war  he  was  also  consulted  and 
his  advice  at  times  taken,  though  their  views  upon  this 
subject  were  so  different  that  they  gradually  drifted  apart. 

Early  in  the  session  of  1845-46,  after  Texas  had  ac 
cepted  the  terms  offered  her  in  such  haste  by  Tyler  and 
Calhoun,  and  after  Polk  had  recommended  her  admis 
sion,  Benton  gave  a  silent  vote  in  favor  of  the  joint  reso 
lution  for  that  purpose.  He  must  of  course  have  had 
misgivings  as  to  the  outcome  and  as  to  what  regions 
would  turn  out  to  be  "  properly  included  within,  and 
358 


MEXICAN   WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    359 

rightfully  belonging  to,  the  republic  of  Texas,"  but  it 
is  hard  to  see  how  he  could  well  have  done  otherwise, 
after  the  steps  which  had  been  taken  under  the  sanction 
of  law  by  the  American  and  Texan  administrations. 

A  few  months  later  Folk's  Diary  shows  that  the 
Cabinet  had  decided  once  more  to  begin  negotiations  with 
Mexico  and  to  endeavor  "  to  procure  the  cession  of  New 
Mexico  and  California  and  if  possible  all  north  of  lati 
tude  32°  from  the  Passo  on  the  del  Norte  and  west  to  the 
Pacific  or  [if  that  were  impossible]  then  the  next  best 
boundary  which  might  be  practicable,  so  as  at  all  events 
to  include  all  the  country  east  of  the  del  Norte,  and  the 
Bay  of  San  Francisco."  And  as  it  was  considered  abso 
lutely  necessary  to  have  some  money  to  pay  down  for 
such  a  treaty,  Polk  sent  for  Benton  to  consult  as  to  the 
possibility  of  securing  an  appropriation  in  advance.  This 
was  on  March  28,  1846,  and  Polk  goes  on :  "I  explained 
to  him  fully  my  views  and  object.  He  at  once  concurred 
with  me  in  the  importance  of  obtaining  if  practicable  such 
I  a  boundary  as  I  proposed  and  in  the  propriety  of  such  an 
appropriation  by  Congress  to  enable  me  to  do  it." 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  Benton  had  any  expecta 
tion  that  this  plan  would  succeed,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact 
it  came  to  nothing,  and  on  May  3  he  was  again  consulted 
about  the  thickening  Mexican  difficulties.  Polk  writes 
that  at  this  interview  Benton  "  expressed  a  decided  aver 
sion  to  a  war  with  [Mexico,  if  it  could  be  avoided  con 
sistently  with  the  honor  of  the  country;"  and  when  on 
May  1 1  he  was  once  more  sent  for  and  shown  a  copy  of 
the  message  announcing  the  existence  of  the  war,  which 
was  sent  to  Congress  later  that  day,  Polk  writes : 

"  I  found  he  did  not  approve  it  in  all  its  parts.  He  was  willing 
to  vote  men  and  money  for  defence  of  our  territory,  but  was  not  pre 
pared  to  make  aggressive  war  on  Mexico.  He  disapproved  the 
marching  of  the  army  from  Corpus  Christi  to  the  left  bank  of  the 
del  Norte,  but  said  he  had  never  said  so  in  public.  I  had  a  full  con- 


360       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

versation  with  him  and  he  left  without  satisfying  me  that  I  could 
rely  upon  his  support  of  the  measures  recommended  by  the  message, 
further  than  the  mere  defence  of  our  territory.  I  inferred,  too, 
from  his  conversation  that  he  did  not  think  the  territory  of  the 
United  States  extended  west  of  the  Nueces  River." 

At  a  later  interview  that  same  evening,  when  the 
House  had  voted  the  measures  recommended  and  Polk 
was  urging  that  the  Senate  should  do  the  same,  Benton 
objected  that  the  House  had  acted  in  the  space  of  two 
hours,  of  which  one  and  a  half  went  to  the  mere  reading 
of  documents,  and  added  that  "  in  his  opinion  in  the 
nineteenth  century  war  should  not  be  declared  without 
full  discussion  and  much  more  consideration." 

The  next  day  Benton  voted  for  the  war,  as  did  all 
but  two  of  the  members  present,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
from  what  precedes  that  he  was  altogether  opposed  to  it. 
He  had  in  the  past  dilated  on  "  the  cordon  of  republics" 
stretching  across  the  continent,  which  it  should  be  our 
interest  to  aid  and  to  win  the  trust  of,  but  war  actually 
existed  and  had  to  be  recognized.  But  he  was  never  fully 
reconciled  to  it  and  seems  to  have  hoped  even  then  that 
peace  might  yet  be  secured:  and  at  the  next  session  he 
attacked  Calhoun  fiercely  as  being  its  real  author  by  his 
decision  in  the  last  hours  of  Tyler's  administration  to 
reject  the  plan  of  negotiations  and  adopt  instead  imme 
diate  annexation,  in  spite  of  Mexico's  angry  protest  that 
she  would  consider  such  an  act  as  one  of  war.  He  spoke 
of  this  speech  later  as  his  first  "  Calhouniac,"  a  species 
of  which  it  will  be  found  there  were  plenty  of  specimens 
in  the  following  years.* 

Benton  writes  that  at  the  time  war  was  declared,  he 
and  other  Democrats  were  very  much  opposed  and  had 
interviews  with  members  of  the  administration  to  try  and 

*  C.  G.,  2Qth  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  198.  Ibid.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  494-501, 
for  his  attack  on  Calhoun.  View,  ii.,  pp.  680-682. 


MEXICAN   WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    361 

stop  it,  but  found  them  united  in  their  course  and  also 
"  under  the  confident  belief  that  there  would  be  no  war — 
not  another  gun  fired — and  that  in  ninety  or  one  hundred 
days  peace  would  be  signed  and  all  the  objects  gained." 
How  this  was  to  be  accomplished  was  then  left  a  mystery 
to  him,  but  he  became  convinced  later  that  on  the  very 
day  when  war  was  declared,  the  Cabinet  began  the  execu 
tion  of  the  arrangement  for  returning  Santa  Anna  and 
that  this  intrigue  was  what  they  depended  upon. 

The  war  being  an  existing  fact,  Benton  was  of  course 
anxious  for  its  early  completion  and  for  our  success,  and 
was  beyond  doubt  of  great  service  in  leading  to  these 
ends.  During  the  summer  of  1846  he  was  often  con 
sulted,  and  on  July  2  promised  to  submit  his  views  in 
writing  upon  the  manner  of  conducting  the  war,  in  pur 
suance  of  a  request  which  Polk  writes  of  having  recently 
made  of  him.  Benton  probably  then  soon  went  West, 
and  upon  his  return  in  November  learned  that  the  admin 
istration  was  in  very  serious  mood  over  a  possible  in 
crease  of  expenses  in  the  War  Department  of  twenty 
millions,  and  was  not  at  all  decided  whether  our  best 
policy  might  not  be  to  cease  the  active  prosecution  of 
the  war  and  merely  to  hold  the  captured  provinces. 

Being  again  consulted  by  Polk  on  November  7,  he  at 
once  advised  that  Vera  Cruz  should  be  taken  and  a  crush 
ing  movement  then  be  made  on  the  City  of  Mexico ;  he 
was  far  too  much  of  a  fighter  by  nature  not  to  see  the 
folly  for  us  of  the  policy  of  "  masterly  inactivity,"  and  he 
condemned  from  the  first  all  idea  of  waiting,  telling  Polk 
we  were  "  a  go-ahead  people."  To  this  the  "  View"  says 
he  added  that  such  a  policy  was  exactly  suited  to  the  tem 
per  of  the  Spaniard,  who  "  had  sat-out  the  Moors  seven 
hundred  years  in  the  south  of  Spain  and  the  Visigoths 
three  hundred  in  the  north  of  it ;  and  would  certainly  out 
sit  us  in  Mexico."  He  had  other  interviews  with  Polk 
and  with  some  members  of  the  Cabinet,  at  which  the  same 


362       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

views  were  urged,  and  writes  that  he  soon  succeeded  in 
convincing  Polk  but  had  more  trouble  with  the  others. 

The  influence  exerted  by  his  opinions  will  be  recog 
nized  from  the  fact  that  as  late  as  November  10,  1846, 
Folk's  Diary  shows  that  the  Cabinet  had  only  decided 
upon  attacking  Tampico  and  possibly  Vera  Cruz,  "  but 
a  movement  on  the  City  of  Mexico  had  not  been  at  pres 
ent  contemplated,  nor  unless  it  was  ascertained  that  peace 
could  not  be  obtained  without  it."  Benton  adds — what 
does  not  appear  in  Folk's  Diary — that  he  attended  a  Cab 
inet  meeting  by  invitation  and  urged  his  views ;  and  that 
the  arguments  advanced  induced  Polk  to  change  his  an 
nual  message  and  recommend  an  aggressive  campaign, 
but  that  this  was  done  so  late  that  the  report  of  the  Sec 
retary  of  War  recommended  a  policy  almost  exactly  op 
posed  to  that  of  his  chief.  I  am  unable  to  see  this  oppo 
sition  of  view  in  the  two  reports,  but  it  is  at  least  clear 
from  Folk's  Diary  that  Ben  ton's  advice  led  to  changes  in 
some  portions  of  the  message  which  he  was  shown  in 
advance,  and  his  advice  on  the  military  situation  was  be 
yond  question  of  very  great  importance. 

On  November  16  Polk  records  that  Benton  handed 
him  "  a  written  plan  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war 
against  Mexico,"  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this 
plan  became  in  good  part  the  one  acted  upon  during  the 
remainder  of  the  war  with  such  eminent  success.  It  con 
templated  (so  Benton  writes)  the  throwing  of  three  in- 
(vading  columns  upon  Mexico,  all  to  meet  on  the  high 
'tableland  and  then  to  move  upon  the  capital.  The  move 
ment  of  Scott  was  one  part  of  it,  and  Benton  intended 
that  Taylor  should  have  led  a  second  invading  column. 
Doniphan's  remarkable  march  to  New  Mexico  and 
Monterey  represents  in  a  small  way  the  third  column, 
which  Benton  meant  to  advance  from  the  north  and  west. 

One  other  important  device  was  that  a  peace  commis 
sion  made  up  of  leading  public  men  was  to  go  with  the 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO    363 

army,  they  and  the  commander-in-chief  to  have  consider 
able  discretion  under  the  directions  of  the  President  as 
to  making  peace.  Benton  writes  that  he  had  been  famil 
iar  for  many  years,  from  Humboldt  and  other  sources, 
with  the  natural  defences  of  Mexico  and  knew  well  the 
divisions  of  her  population,  so  that  he  was  in  some  re 
spects  at  least  well  equipped  for  the  problem  he  had 
had  to  work  out. 

There  was  for  a  long  time  hesitation  in  the  Cabinet 
as  to  whcPlo  put  in  command  of  the  expedition  against 
Vera  Cruz,  and  it  is  well  known  that  politics  entered 
largely  into  this  question.  Polk  had  no  desire  to  aid  the 
Whigs  by  advancing  to  prominence  successful  generals 
belonging  to  that  party,  while  at  the  same  time  both  he 
and  Benton  thought  Taylor  unfit  and  Scott  hardly  less  so. 
It  was,  however,  at  length  decided  after  much  discussion 
to  select  Scott,*  Benton  advising  this  and  agreeing  with 
others  that  they  "  would  have  to  vise  the  instrument  which 
the  law  has  given."  At  an  interview  on  November  10  Polk 
writes  that  Benton  referred  to  the  efforts  of  the  Whigs 
to  make  capital  out  of  the  war  and  said  he  had  come  to 
aid  Polk,  despite  the  fact  that  he  had  been  in  favor  of 
the  nomination  of  Van  Buren ;  but  that  he  believed  in 
letting  by-gones  be  by-gones,  as  he  had  shown  in  the  case 
of  his  quarrel  and  later  friendship  with  Jackson. 

According  to  Polk,  during  this  interview,  while  con 
sulting  as  to  the  best  officer  to  select  for  the  Vera  Cruz 
expedition,  Benton  "  said  there  ought  to  be  a  lieutenant- 
general  of  the  army,  who  should  be  general-in-chief.  .  .  . 
He  then  said  that,  if  such  an  office  was  created  by  Con 
gress,  he  would  be  willing  to  accept  the  command  him 
self."  This  device  was  warmly  taken  up  by  Polk  and  he 


*  Polk  informed  Scott  on  November  19  of  this  determination, 
and  writes  "  he  was  so  grateful  and  so  much  affected  that  he  almost 
shed  tears." 


364       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

long  sought  for  some  means  by  which  to  put  Benton  in 
supreme  command,  although  at  one  time  apparently  anx 
ious  to  abandon  it  because  of  fear  that  the  bill  would  fail 
to  pass  Congress.  This  was  after  Benton  and  he  had  had 
repeated  differences  as  to  the  selection  of  Slidell  *  as  one 
of  the  intended  peace  commissioners,  Polk  writing  after 
several  discussions  of  the  matter  that  he  found  Benton 
"  still  stubbornly  opposed"  on  personal  grounds  to  Sli- 
dell's  selection.  But  Benton  wanted  to  have  the  effort 
made  to  create  the  office  of  lieutenant-general  and  to  put 
the  responsibility  on  Congress,  and  Polk  writes,  "  I  found 
Colonel  Benton  fixed  on  this  point.  If  I  do  not  propose 
it,  it  is  manifest  from  this  interview  with  him  that  both 
he  and  his  friends  will  be  greatly  displeased." 

Benton  does  not  seem  at  any  time  to  have  intended 
personally  to  take  the  direction  of  campaigns  and  battles 
but  to  confine  his  function  to  "  the  responsibility  of  plans 
and  movements,  while  the  generals,  at  the  heads  of  divi 
sions  or  columns,  would  only  have  the  responsibility  of 
execution,"  and  in  his  speech  in  explanation  of  the  matter 
in  the  Senate  he  compared  the  command  he  should  have 
exercised  as  lieutenant-general  to  that  ordinarily  exer 
cised  by  the  President. 

The  making  of  peace  was  also  a  chief  part  of  his  plan, 
as  to  which  he  wanted  to  have  a  wide  discretion  under 
the  authority  of  the  Executive.  He  had  been  in  close 
touch  with  the  army  and  military  affairs  nearly  steadily 
since  1828  as  chairman  of  the  committee  on  military  af 
fairs,  and  was  all  his  life  through  a  student  of  military 
matters.  It  was,  however,  many  years  since  he  had 
served  in  the  field  and  then  he  had  only  commanded  a 
regiment,  so  that  the  intention  to  appoint  him  has  been 

*  Folk's  Diary  of  December  9,  1846,  indicates  that  Wright  of 
New  York,  Crittenden  of  Kentucky,  and  Benton,  were  pretty  much 
agreed  upon,  but  Polk  felt  bound  also  to  Slidell. 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO     365 

much  criticised;  but  it  may  be  safely  said  that — what 
ever  is  the  case  to-day  with  the  infinite  complication  and 
vastness  of  military  affairs — men  less  acquainted  by  act 
ual  contact  with  the  command  of  armies  have  made 
marked  successes,  and  the  idea  of  selecting  him  for  mili 
tary  command  had  the  endorsement  of  one  whose  judg 
ment  it  is  impossible  to  make  light  of.  Jackson  had 
twice  intended  to  appoint  Benton  to  the  command  of 
the  army,  both  wThen  affairs  looked  very  warlike  with 
France  and  again  in  the  event  of  war  with  Mexico. 

On  December  29,  1846,  in  a  special  message,  Polk 
recommended  the  creation  of  the  office  of  lieutenant-gen 
eral,  and  it  was  evidently  understood  from  the  start  that 
Benton  was  to  be  named.  Benton  says  that  he  asked  the 
President  to  make  known  that  such  was  his  intention,  and 
adds,  "  I  forbade  my  friends  to  say  a  word  on  my  account. 
I  would  not  say  a  word  for  myself.  I  would  not  even 
obviate  a  prominent  objection  by  reminding  any  one  that 
in  1812  I  was  the  military  superior  of  every  general  now 
in  the  service." 

While  the  matter  was  under  debate,  he  appears  to 
have  left  the  Senate  chamber,  and  he  absented  himself 
from  the  meetings  of  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs, 
thereby  producing  for  a  time  a  deadlock.  He  says  that 
the  measure  "  readily  passed  the  House,  but  was  under 
mined  and  defeated  in  the  Senate  by  three  of  the  Presi 
dent's  Cabinet  Ministers,  Messrs.  Marcy,  Walker,  and 
Buchanan — clone  covertly,  of  course,  for  reasons  uncon 
nected  with  the  public  service."  It  was  rumored  at  the 
time  that  the  matter  was  one  of  warm  dispute  in  the  Cab 
inet,  but  this  fact  does  not  appear  in  Folk's  Diary,  nor 
does  it  contain  any  evidence  that  Buchanan,  W7alker,  or 
Marcy  was  against  the  bill. 

On  a  subsequent  occasion  Benton  expressed  great  dis 
gust  at  some  conduct  of  Scott  and  Taylor,  and  told  Polk 
he  wras  now  (January  20,  1847)  willing  to  go  as  "  a  ma- 


366       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

jor-general  or  a  lieutenant-colonel  or  in  any  other  rank, 
provided  I  can  have  the  command  of  the  army ;  and  if  I 
can  have  such  command  I  will  close  the  war  before  July." 
And  at  the  end  of  the  session  he  was  nominated  as  one  of 
the  new  major-generals  and  at  once  confirmed.  Accord 
ing  to  Polk,  this  nomination  was  made  in  pursuance  of 
Benton's  request,  and  Polk  writes  that  he  was  surprised 
in  a  few  days  to  hear  Benton  say  that  he  had  "  no  desire 
to  go  to  Mexico  simply  to  have  a  plume  and  bunch  of 
feathers  in  his  hat,"  thus  evidently  adhering  to  his  deter 
mination  to  have  the  supreme  command  or  nothing. 

The  President  and  the  Cabinet  were,  however,  clear 
that  they  had  no  authority  to  appoint  Benton,  a  junior 
major-general,  to  the  command  of  his  seniors,  and  they 
did  not  see  how  they  could  well  "  withdraw  or  order  to 
separate  posts  all  the  senior  major-generals  now  in 
Mexico,"  so  as  to  make  room  for  him.  As  soon  as  Ben- 
ton  was  informed  of  their  conclusion,  he  resigned,  but 
almost  immediately  afterwards  Polk  learned  that  one  of 
the  senior  major-generals  (Butler)  had  arrived  in  New 
Orleans,  probably  invalided  by  wounds,  and  he  at  once 
hoped  that  he  saw  then  a  way  to  put  Benton  at  the  head 
of  affairs.  He  had  already  made  up  his  mind  that  he 
should  have  no  trouble  about  removing  Scott  and  Taylor, 
and  there  would  thus  have  been  only  one  senior  ( Patter 
son)  to  be  got  rid  of,  and  some  way  might  be  found  to 
relegate  him  also  to  Canada  or  some  other  region  away 
from  the  seat  of  actual  war. 

Polk  accordingly  sent  to  Benton  on  March  10  to  ask 
him  to  postpone  his  final  decision  for  a  few  days,  but 
Benton  at  once  declined  to  do  so.  The  latter  was  by  this 
time  indignant  at  the  discovery  of  Buchanan's  Oregon 
articles  against  him  as  well  as  at  suspected  underhand  op 
position  to  the  lieutenant-general  bill,  and  thought  that 
some  other  newspaper  publications  to  his  detriment  could 
be  clearly  traced  to  the  departments,  and  Polk  closes  by 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    367 

saying  that  Benton's  "  decision  was  positive  that  he  would 
not  accept  the  office  of  major-general  and  that  he  would 
not  postpone  a  decision  of  that  question  to  await  further 
developments,  as  I  had  requested  him  to  do." 

Benton  at  once  printed  (so  Polk  writes)  the  corre 
spondence  upon  this  subject  between  the  President  and 
himself  and  sent  a  copy  to  each  Senator,  with  the  inten 
tion  apparently  of  clearing  himself  from  some  newspaper 
charges  which  he  thought  detrimental.  Probably  it  may 
be  assumed  that  Polk  had  explained  to  him  in  what  \vay 
it  was  intended  to  advance  him  to  the  supreme  command, 
and  it  is  certainly  fortunate  that  he  had  no  share  in  aiding 
to  carry  out  that  very  worst  feature  of  the  whole  design. 
Whatever  may  be  said,  under  the  then  existing  circum 
stances,  of  creating  a  new  office  so  as  to  appoint  a  com- 
mander-in-chief,  there  could  be  no  possible  defence  for 
baldly  relieving  of  their  commands  and  sending  to  the 
rear  Taylor  and  Scott,  who,  despite  their  grievous  faults, 
had  rendered  distinguished  services  both  recently  and  in 
the  past. 

One  other  matter  is  to  be  learned  from  Folk's  Diary, 
which  should  be  mentioned  here.  It  is  well  known  that 
the  administration  was  engaged  in  numerous  unavailing 
intrigues  for  peace,  but  one  particular  effort  does  not 
seem  to  be  generally  known  in  its  details.  In  the  winter 
of  1846-47  one  Atocha  appeared  in  Washington,  claiming 
to  be  the  representative  of  the  Mexican  authorities.  Polk 
had  interviews  with  him,  but  did  not  trust  him ;  but  later 
Benton  and  Buchanan  became  entirely  convinced  that  "  he 
was  the  confidential  agent  of  Santa  Anna  sent  to  Wash 
ington  to  open  the  door  for  negotiations  and  the  conclu 
sion  of  a  peace." 

After  several  conferences  with  him,  Benton  told  Polk 
that  the  Mexicans  would  agree  to  "  the  Rio  Grande  as 
the  boundary,  reserving  a  space  of  territory  between  that 
river  and  the  Nueces  as  a  barrier  between  the  two  coun- 


368       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

tries,  and  that  they  would  be  willing  to  cede  California 
to  the  United  States  for  a  "  consideration.  .  .  .  Ben  ton 
was  in  favor  of  agreeing  to  appoint  commissioners  to 
meet  at  Havana,  if  Mexico  should  do  so,  and  thought 
such  an  intimation  should  be  given  in  some  way  to  the 
Mexican  government."  The  consequence  was  that  about 
the  middle  of  January  Atocha  was  sent  on  the  United 
States  revenue  boat  "  The  Bible"  to  Vera  Cruz  with  a 
letter  to  the  Mexican  authorities  suggesting  the  opening 
of  negotiations ;  but,  whether  or  not  the  Mexican  rulers 
were  simply  playing  with  us,  the  result  was  nothing. 
Atocha  arrived  in  Washington  again  about  March  20 
with  the  answer  that  the  Mexican  government  refused  to 
open  negotiations  unless  our  squadron  was  withdrawn 
from  their  coasts  and  our  armies  from  their  territory. 
This  seems  to  have  finally  decided  Polk,  still  against 
Buchanan's  wishes,  in  favor  of  Benton's  idea  of  a  crush 
ing  movement  on  the  City  of  Mexico.* 


*  See  generally  on  the  matters  ante,  Folk's  Diary,  passim,  at 
the  dates  indicated.  Letter  of  Benton,  dated  January  14,  1847, 
to  Buchanan,  in  the  collections  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsyl 
vania.  Benton's  letter  spells  the  name  of  the  Mexican  emissary 
Atocha,  while  it  is  Atacha  in  the  type-written  copy  of  Folk's  Diary 
in  the  New  York  Public  Library;  but  a  note  by  Bancroft  warns 
the  reader  that  many  errors  of  spelling  had  been  made  by  the  copyist. 
View,  ii.,  pp.  678,  679,  687,  693,  694.  General  F.  P.  Blair,  Jr.'s,  ad 
dress.  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  246,  247.  I  cannot  make  out  the 
proceedings  in  Congress  exactly  as  Benton  details  them :  the  bill  for 
a  lieutenant-general  seems  to  have  failed  in  both  houses,  though  at 
one  time  the  House  voted  to  insert  it  in  a  bill  for  the  increase  of  the 
army  (ibid.,  p.  160),  but  this  was  soon  undone  again  (ibid.)  ;  in 
the  Senate  it  was  early  laid  on  the  table  (ibid.,  p.  187,  and  see  pp. 
175,  etc.).  Subsequently,  on  a  bill  for  additional  general  officers,  the 
House  inserted  a  provision  to  authorize  the  appointment  of  any 
major-general,  without  regard  to  date  of  commission,  to  the  supreme 
command  during  the  war  (ibid.,  pp.  518,  574),  but  the  Senate  did 
not  concur,  and  then  adjourned  without  further  action  (ibid.,  p. 
57-).  Niles's  Register,  vol.  Ixxii.,  p,  18, 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    369 

Meanwhile  events  had  been  taking  place  which  soon 
emphasized  and  increased  Benton's  growing  political  iso 
lation.  In  August,  1846,  Polk  asked  for  an  appropria 
tion  of  two  million  dollars  to  enable  him  to  negotiate  a 
treaty  with  Mexico,  the  purpose  to  purchase  territory 
being  of  course  plain  enough ;  and  it  became  evident  then 
in  a  few  days  that  the  Mexican  War,  instead  of  silently 
equalizing  once  more  the  relative  strength  of  the  South 
in  the  Union,  was  destined  to  precipitate  such  a  struggle 
over  slavery  as  had  not  yet  been  witnessed. 

The  South  had  brought  on  the  war  for  the  express 
purpose  of  securing  their  future.  They  meant  to  settle 
the  new  region  with  Southern  people,  who  should  carry 
slaves  there  and  in  due  time  ask  for  admission  into  the 
Union  as  slave  States.  They  had  long  feared,  and  with 
good  reason,  for  the  ultimate  result  of  the  growing  abo 
lition  sentiment  upon  the  institution  of  slavery;  and  as 
they  saw  a  vast  territory  to  the  northwest  which  was  sure 
to  become  free  States,  no  one  can  rationally  expect  to  find 
them  quietly  consenting  to  measures  aimed  to  prevent 
their  control  of  the  regions  wrested  from  Mexico.  No 
matter  how  mistaken  their  whole  social  system  may  have 
been,  it  was  not  in  the  nature  of  those  masterful  men 
tamely  to  run  the  risk  of  its  final  destruction  by  an  over 
whelming  preponderance  of  the  North  in  the  Union. 

When  therefore  the  Wilmot  *  proviso — forbidding 
slavery  in  any  of  the  region  to  be  ceded  by  Mexico — was 

*  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  in  December,  1846,  in  a  conversation 
with  Polk,  Wilmot  agreed  not  himself  to  offer  his  proviso  again, 
though  he  said  he  must  vote  for  it,  if  offered  by  some  one  else. 
See  also  on  this  point  the  facts  referred  to  in  footnote  3  to  pp.  82,  83, 
vol.  i.,  of  William  Henry  Smith's  Political  History  of  Slavery. 
Polk  wrote  on  January  5,  1847,  of  the  question  of  slavery  in  the 
new  Territories :  "  It  is  moreover  practically  an  abstract  question. 
There  is  no  probability  that  any  territory  will  ever  be  acquired  from 
Mexico  in  which  slavery  could  ever  exist" 


370       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

offered  as  an  amendment  to  the  two  million  appropriation 
asked  by  Polk,  the  Southern  leaders  were,  soon  very  anx 
ious.  The  proviso  failed  of  adoption  both  at  that  session 
and  at  the  next,  but  its  popularity  at  the  North  and  in 
Congress  showed  very  plainly  that  the  new  possessions 
were  to  be  a  Pandora's  box,  and  for  several  years  the 
public  business  was  grievously  delayed,  while  the  Senate 
and  House  wrere  engaged  in  interminable  discussions  upon 
slavery  under  every  view. 

Benton  was  too  much  of  a  Southerner  and  looked  too 
strongly  upon  a  fraternal  Union  as  our  supreme  good  to 
do  anything  but  vote  against  the  Wilmot  proviso,  but  it 
will  soon  be  seen  that  he  found  also  many  occasions  to 
attack  the  Southern  leaders,  and  he  undoubtedly  began  at 
this  time  rapidly  to  drift  away  from  them  and  towards 
the  position  of  some  of  the  most  conservative  Northern 
men.  The  unnecessary  agitation  of  the  subject  for  par 
tisan  purposes  by  either  side  was  highly  obnoxious  to 
him.  Thus,  the  third  Oregon  bill  in  1848  contained  al 
ready  a  provision  which  excluded  slavery  by  making  of 
force  the  laws  of  the  territory,  one  of  which  forbade 
it;  but  Hale  moved  another  proviso  to  extend  to  the 
region  the  anti-slavery  clause  of  the  ordinance  of  1787. 

The  South  was  at  once  in  arms,  and  Benton,  while 
expressing  himself  as  ready  to  meet  the  slave  question  to 
the  fullest  extent  at  the  proper  time,  called  on  members 
to  vote  down  this  amendment  immediately,  give  a  gov 
ernment  to  the  people  in  Oregon,  and  stop  the  cruel  In 
dian  war.  "  We  read  in  Holy  Writ,"  he  said,  evidently 
in  deep  grief  at  the  course  of  affairs,  "  that  a  certain  peo 
ple  were  cursed  by  the  plague  of  frogs,  and  that  the 
plague  was  everywhere.  You  could  not  look  upon  the 
table  but  there  were  frogs,  you  could  not  sit  down  at  the 
banquet  but  there  were  frogs,  you  could  not  go  to  the 
bridal  conch  and  lift  the  sheets  but  there  were  frogs !  We 
can  see  nothing,  touch  nothing,  have  no  measures  pro- 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO     371 

posed,  without  having  this  pestilence  thrust  before  us. 
Here  it  is,  this  black  question,  forever  on  the  table,  on 
the  nuptial  couch,  everywhere.  So  it  was  not  in  the  bet 
ter  days  of  the  republic."  * 

And  he  showed  quite  as  clearly  his  opposition  to  ef 
forts  on  the  part  of  the  South  to  keep  the  question  forever 
under  agitation  and  to  insist  upon  mere  abstract  discus 
sion.  "  What  then  is  all  the  present  uproar  about?"  he 
said  in  his  Jefferson  City  speech  in  1849.  "  Abstraction! 
The  abstract  right  of  doing  what  cannot  be  done!  .  .  . 
All  abstraction !  And  no  reality,  substance,  or  practice  in 
it!"  And  it  was  upon  this  same  ground  that  he  had  a 
clash  with  Calhoun  in  1847.  Calhoun  brought  in  at  that 
session  his  resolutions  as  to  the  nature  of  the  United 
States's  ownership  of  the  territories,  and  maintained  that 
Congress  had  no  right  to  pass  any  law  that  would  prevent 
the  Southerners  from  migrating  there  with  their  slaves. 

As  there  was  much  important  legislation  to  be  passed 
yet,  Benton  at  once  objected  strongly  to  laying  aside  "  the 
necessary  business  of  the  session  to  vote  on  such  a  string 
of  abstractions,''  saying  that  he  "  never  would  leave  public 
business  to  take  up  fire-brands  to  set  the  world  on  fire." 
And  when  Calhoun  replied  that  all  the  great  rules  of  life 
were  abstractions  and  that  he  had  counted  on  finding  the 
Senator  from  Missouri,  the  representative  of  a  slavehold- 
ing  State,  ready  to  support  the  principles  of  the  resolu 
tions,  Benton  replied :  "  I  shall  be  found  in  the  right  place. 
I  am  on  the  side  of  my  country  and  the  Union."  In  the 
"  Thirty  Years'  View,"  he  adds :  "  This  answer,  given  on 
that  day  and  on  the  spot,  is  one  of  the  incidents  of  his 
life  which  Mr.  Benton  will  wish  posterity  to  remember."  f 

Upon  the  failure  of  the  second  Oregon  bill  in  1847, 

*  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  686. 
t  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  455.    View,  ii.,  p.  697.     For  his 
Oregon  letter,  see  Niles's  Register,  vol.  Ixxv.,  p.  148. 


372       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART    BENTON 

Benton  soon  came  out  in  a  public  letter  calling  upon  the 
people  there  to  stand  to  their  law  prohibiting  slavery, 
assuring  them  that  the  next  Congress  would  pass  a  law 
to  organize  the  territory  and  maintaining  that  the  recent 
failure  was  due  to  Calhoun's  having  forced  the  insertion 
of  an  amendment  to  abrogate  their  exclusion  of  slavery. 
Here  again  it  is  very  clear  that  he  regarded  slavery  as 
impossible  in  Oregon  and  as  rightfully  forbidden  by  the 
inhabitants,  and  that  he  looked  upon  Calhoun's  course  as 
mere  agitation  of  an  abstract  question.  Polk,  to  whom 
Benton  showed  this  letter,  had  tried  hard  but  in  vain  to 
induce  him  not  to  publish  it. 

It  was  at  the  following  session  that  the  treaty  with 
Mexico  was  ratified  and  the  country  stood  face  to  face 
with  the  terrible  struggle  over  the  organization  of  those 
regions;  but  the  session  resulted  in  nothing  upon  the 
whole  subject  but  a  bill  for  Oregon.  For  weeks  Con 
gress  floundered  in  a  very  slough  of  despond.  It  was  at 
this  time  that  much  began  to  be  heard  of  the  doctrine 
that  the  constitution  proprio  vigore  legalized  slavery  in  all 
the  territories, — what  Benton  calls  the  migratory  function 
of  the  Constitution  and  insists  cannot  be  classed  higher 
by  history  than  as  "  a  vagary  of  a  diseased  imagination." 
At  one  time,  too,  the  Senate  tried  to  shunt  off  on  to  the 
shoulders  of  the  courts  the  decision  of  the  right  to  hold 
slaves  in  the  Territories.  This  was  towards  the  end  of  a 
long  session  and  was  contained  in  the  Clayton  Compro 
mise  Bill,  which  was  to  organize  all  the  new  Territories  at 
once  and  of  which  Clayton  said,*  "  We  offer  no  bill  to 
introduce  slavery  by  congressional  enactment  into  any 
free  Territory."  Here  was  undoubtedly  one  main  bait  for 
this  bill,  the  object  being  to  enable  Northern  members  to 
vote  for  the  measure  and  then  by  this  plea  explain  their 
action  to  objecting  constituents  at  home. 

*  C.  G.,  3Oth  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  950,  1002-1005. 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    373 

The  origin  of  this  bill  in  the  committee  is  interesting. 
Polk  had  been  in  favor  of  extending  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  line  to  the  Pacific,  but  on  July  16,  1848,  Calhoun 
called  and  told  him  that  Clayton's  committee  was  unable 
to  agree  upon  this.  "  He  stated/'  Polk  goes  on,  "  that 
a  proposition  of  non-interference  with  the  subject  (of 
slavery)  in  California  and  New  Mexico  had  been  sug 
gested  by  Senator  Dickinson  *  of  New  York,  which  might 
be  agreed  upon  by  the  committee." 

The  plan  was  to  let  Oregon's  laws  against  slavery 
stand,  while  in  California  and  New  Mexico  the  legisla 
tive  power  should  "  be  restrained  by  Congress  from  legis 
lating  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  leaving  the  question,  if  it 
should  arise,  to  be  decided  by  the  judiciary.  He  said  he 
would  support  this  proposition  and  I  told  him  I  approved 
it."  The  legislative  power  was  to  be  vested  in  the  gov 
ernor,  secretary,  and  three  judges,  and  Calhoun  said  that 

*  This  proposition  of  Dickinson's  was  extremely  different  from 
his  resolutions  offered  in  the  Senate  on  December  14,  1847,  which 
contained  a  very  distinct  suggestion  of  "  popular  sovereignty." 
Calhoun  had  at  once  scouted  the  resolutions  and  looked  upon  them 
as  worse  than  the  Wilmot  proviso  (Foote's  War  of  the  Rebellion, 
pp.  71-76;  View,  ii.,  p.  715;  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix, 
p.  871).  Cass  is  ~sually  regarded  as  the  author  of  the  doctrine  of 
popular  sovereignty,  and  he  did  suggest  it  very  clearly  in  his  Nichol 
son  letter  (dated  December  24,  1847,  and  published  in  Niles's  Regis 
ter  for  January  8,  1848,  vol.  Ixxiii.,  pp.  293,  294),  but  Dickinson's 
resolutions  were  earlier,  and  Foote  says  that  they  had  been  shown  by 
Dickinson  to  Cass.  The  truth  is  that  the  doctrine,  absurd  though  it 
was,  was  a  not  unnatural  development  from  the  admitted  right  of  a 
Territory,  about  to  be  admitted  into  the  Union,  to  decide  the  subject 
for  itself  and  from  other  American  principles  of  government ;  hints 
of  it  can  be  found  in  more  than  one  earlier  instance :  see,  for 
example,  the  amendment  offered  by  Clay  to  Calhoun's  slavery  reso 
lutions  in  1838  (quoted  in  View,  ii.,  p.  137),  and  again  the  Mis 
souri  resolutions  as  to  the  annexation  of  Texas  offered  by  Benton 
in  the  Senate  in  1845  (C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  154).  See  in 
general  Burgess's  Middle  Period,  pp.  384-386. 


374       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

much  would  depend  on  Folk's  appointments  to  these 
places ;  that  they  ought  to  be  Southern  men  "  who  would 
maintain  the  Southern  views  on  the  subject  of  slavery." 
Polk  thought  Calhoun's  tone  indicated  a  desire  to  elicit  a 
pledge,  and  writes :  "  I  at  once  felt  the  delicacy  of  my  situ 
ation  and  promptly  replied  that  that  was  a  subject  upon 
which  I  could  not  speak,  .  .  .  and  jocosely  added  that 
my  friends,  as  General  Harrison's  Cincinnati  committee 
in  1844  [meaning  1840?]  said  for  him,  must  have  a 
*  generous  confidence'  that  I  would  do  so." 

Up  to  this  time,  the  design  was  to  leave  the  question 
to  the  judiciary  of  the  territory,  without  any  right  of  ap 
peal,  but  the  next  day  Calhoun  reported  that  "  they  had 
agreed  on  the  plan  suggested  on  yesterday,  but  the  North 
ern  members  of  the  committee  insisted  upon  inserting  a 
provision  in  the  bill  allowing  an  appeal  from  the  decision 
of  the  lower  court  to  be  established  in  California  and  New 
Mexico  on  the  slavery  question  to  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,"  and  he  objected  to  this.  It  was  then 
arranged  that  Polk  should  see  Bright  and  try  to  get  him 
to  yield  the  question  of  an  appeal,  but  a  few  days  later 
the  committee  made  its  report,  Calhoun  having,  as  Polk 
records,  given  up  his  objection. 

Except  in  so  far  as  this  bill  was  possibly  a  rather  cun 
ning  device  of  the  Southern  leaders  silently  to  gain  their 
point,  it  was  merely  one  of  those  makeshifts  at  which  pa 
triotic  men  will  often  grasp  in  the  hope  of  escape  from 
difficulties  which  seem  insuperable  and  they  merely  want 
to  get  rid  of.  Benton  voted  for  it,  doubtless  willing  and 
anxious  to  push  aside  in  almost  any  way  the  irritating 
question  which  was  so  terribly  undermining  the  Union: 
and  to  this  reason  he  tells  us  *  was  added  the  desire  "  '  to 


*  Examination  of  Dred  Scott  Case,  pp.  117,  118.  The  bill  we  are 
considering  was  the  one  which  for  the  first  time  purported  also  "  to 
extend  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States"  to  the  Territory,  the 


MEXICAN   WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO    375 

estop  Mr.  Calhoun'  with  a  measure  of  his  own  .  .  .  with 
a  Wilmot  proviso  of  his  own  concoction,"  by  which  he 
means  that  he  was  entirely  convinced  that  "  no  man  would 
carry  his  slave  six  thousand  miles  by  water  and  over  free 
soil  at  Panama  or  Nicaragua,  or  three  thousand  miles 
over  land  and  Indian  country  between  the  old  States  and 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  just  to  begin  that  suit  with  him  which 
the  Senate's  bill  proposed." 

Benton  adds  that  Calhoun  was  excessively  solicitous 
for  the  passage  of  this  bill,  and  it  did  get  through  the 
Senate  but  met  with  scant  courtesy  in  the  House,*  which 
passed  instead  a  bill  of  its  own  merely  to  organize  the 
Territory  of  Oregon,  the  fourteenth  section  of  which  con 
tained  an  adoption  of  the  Territorial  laws  (one  of  which 
excluded  slavery)  and  of  the  prohibitions  contained  in 
the  ordinance  of  1787.  When  this  measure  reached  the 
Senate,  that  body  added  to  it  a  provision  extending  the 
Missouri  Compromise  line  westward  to  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

Here  was  of  course  one  more  effort  by  the  South  to 
settle  the  slavery  question  by  making  it  a  condition  of 
the  Oregon  bill  that  slavery  might  be  legal  in  the  South- 
design  being,  of  course,  thus  to  apply  the  theory  that  the  Constitu 
tion  recognized  and  legalized  slavery.  This  provision  was  contained 
in  one  of  its  last  sections,  and  Benton  says  (ibid.,  pp.  12,  119) 
that  no  one  hinted  at  it  in  the  debate,  and  that  he  "  voted  for  the  bill 
without  knowing  such  a  provision  was  in  it — nor  did  he  know  of  it 
until  long  after." 

*It  was  at  once  laid  upon  the  table  on  motion  of  Alexander 
Stephens.  According  to  Henry  S.  Foote  (War  of  the  Rebellion, 
pp.  79-81),  Stephens  was  apprehensive  that  the  Supreme  Court 
would  decide  that  slavery  did  not  exist  in  the  new  possessions, 
owing  to  antecedent  Mexican  legislation  abolishing  it.  The 
Southern  members  generally  voted  with  Stephens.  Foote  seriously 
maintains  the  simply  absurd  view  that,  in  case  of  such  a  decision, 
"the  South  would  have  rested  quiet  under  this  determination." 
They  would  never  have  done  so,  any  more  than  the  North  did  under 
the  Dred  Scott  decision. 


376       LIFE   OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ern  parts  of  the  regions  ceded  by  Mexico,  and  for  this 
again  Benton  voted.  He  explained  later  in  his  Fayette 
speech  that  he  gave  this  vote  "  for  the  chance  it  presented 
— the  very  slight  chance — of  settling  the  question,"  but 
with  his  mind  made  up  at  the  time  to  recede  from  the 
amendment,  if  necessary  to  save  the  Oregon  bill;  and 
though  some  writers  have  charged  him  with  a  quasi  crime 
in  later  changing  his  vote,  his  explanation  of  his  motives 
is  certainly  ample.  This  Senate  amendment  the  House 
refused  to  concur  in  by  the  decisive  vote  of  one  hun 
dred  and  twenty-one  nays  to  eighty-two  yeas,  and  then 
it  was  that  Benton  changed  his  vote  and  moved  that 
the  Senate  recede  from  its  amendment  and  approve  the 
House  bill. 

In  making  this  motion  Benton  said  that  he  had  always 
been  "  opposed  to  clogging  Oregon  with  California,  .  .  . 
he  thought  he  had  now  done  enough  to  secure  concilia 
tion  and  compromise.  Oregon  was  now  in  a  deplorable 
condition."  There  was  at  once  bitter  opposition  from  the 
South  to  Benton's  motion  to  recede,  and  Calhoun  said, 
doubtless  in  bitter  disappointment  at  the  failure  of  all  his 
efforts  and  particularly  at  the  loss  of  the  elaborately  con 
cocted  Clayton  Compromise  plan :  "  The  great  strife  be 
tween  the  North  and  the  South  is  ended.  The  North  is 
determined  to  exclude  the  property  of  the  slave-holder, 
and  of  course  the  slave-holder  himself,  from  its  territory. 
.  .  .  The  effect  of  this  determination  of  the  North  was 
to  convert  all  the  Southern  population  into  slaves :  and  he 
would  never  consent  to  entail  that  disgrace  on  his  pos 
terity.  .  .  .  The  separation  of  the  North  and  South  is 
completed."  To  which  Benton  replied  that  "  all  this  talk 
about  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  gave  him  no  concern. 
...  He  would  think  that  a  man  who  might  bring  brick, 
mortar,  and  trowel  to  dam  up  the  mighty  Mississippi  had 
commenced  a  feasible  and  wise  enterprise  in  comparison 
with  the  project  of  that  man  who  might  undertake  to  run 


MEXICAN   WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    377 

a  dividing  line  between  the  States  of  this  Union.    All  this 
talk  of  disunion  was  idle.     It  was  like 

"'A   tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing.' 

"  No  influence  had  these  menaces  on  him.  A  key 
dropped  into  the  broad  Atlantic  would,  as  it  had  been 
said,  produce  a  disturbance  that  would  be  felt  in  the  seas 
of  China.  Just  as  little  did  this  talk  of  disunion  ruffle 
him."  * 

Nor  was  this  mild  collision  the  only  one  that  came  to 
Benton  on  that  day.  It  seems  that  at  about  this  time  some 
resolutions  offered  by  him  in  secret  session  in  regard  to 
the  nomination  of  General  Kearney  had  found  their  way 
into  the  public  press,  and  at  the  evening  session  Butler, 
of  South  Carolina,  moved  to  go  into  executive  session, 
indicating  very  plainly  in  his  speech  that  he  intended  to 
charge  this  breach  of  propriety  upon  Benton  and  to  make 
some  motion  against  him. 

The  latter  was  in  a  fury  at  once,  and  said  loudly :  "A 
speech  to  the  galleries,  Mr.  President.  Going  into  execu 
tive  session  to  try  the  Senator  from  Missouri  for  a  breach 
of  the  privileges  of  the  Senate.  There  is  a  lie  in  his 
throat.  I  will  cram  it  down  or  choke  it  out/'  And  he 

*  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  1076.  Calhoun's  speech  is  at 
ibid.,  p.  1074,  an<3  see  Houston's  answer,  somewhat  in  the  line  of 
Benton's,  at  p.  1075.  The  bill  as  finally  passed  is  at  ibid.,  pp.  1078- 
1080.  The  Senate  amendment  inserting  the  Missouri  Compromise  is 
printed  in  the  House  proceedings  at  ibid.,  p.  1062,  and  the  bill 
earlier  passed  by  the  Senate  and  covering  all  the  Territories  is  at 
ibid.,  pp.  1002-1005.  For  other  proceedings  of  importance,  see  ibid., 
pp.  804,  805,  871,  875,  876,  927,  928,  932,  950,  1002,  1031,  1043,  1048, 
1060-1062,  1074-1078.  Many  of  the  speeches  are  printed  more  in 
extenso  in  the  appendix.  Benton  maintained  in  his  Fayette  speech 
of  September  i,  1849,  that  he  carried  this  Oregon  bill  and  that  it 
was  one  of  the  proud  actions  of  his  life. 


378       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

then  approached  Butler  in  a  manner  indicating  an  inten 
tion  to  carry  out  his  threat,  but  bystanders  rushed  between 
and  prevented  any  immediate  disturbance.  A  correspond 
ence  resulted  in  a  challenge  from  Butler  to  Benton  at  the 
hands  of  Foote, — indeed,  Benton  received  two  challenges 
in  the  matter  in  one  day, — but  Benton  seems  to  have  de 
clined  to  continue  the  negotiations  through  Foote,  "  not 
on  grounds  affecting  the  personal  honor  of  that  gentle 
man."  Finally,  warrants  were  issued  against  both  princi 
pals,  and  they  were  severally  held  in  bonds  for  ten  thou 
sand  dollars  to  keep  the  peace.  I  do  not  know  how  the 
personal  quarrel  was  composed.* 

Benton  had  been  one  of  the  fourteen  Senators  to  vote 
against  the  Mexican  treaty,  but  the  reasons  actuating  him 
are  not  clear.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  dissatisfaction 
with  the  treaty  in  the  cabinet,  some  members  even  think 
ing  it  should  be  rejected  and  all  agreeing  (so  Polk  writes 
on  February  21)  that  clause  10,  in  regard  to  grants  of 
land,  should  be  rejected.  This  clause  was  accordingly 
stricken  out  and  some  minor  changes  made,  and  then  the 
treaty  was  approved  by  a  vote  of  thirty-four  to  fourteen. 

About  a  year  later  the  point  was  raised  that  the  treaty 
was  of  no  validity  because  of  inconsistency  between  it  and 
the  protocol  drawn  up  at  the  time  of  signing.  This  ques 
tion  was  raised  in  the  House  by  the  Whigs,  but  Polk  and 
some  others  thought  that  Benton  was  in  reality  the  orig 
inator,  and  apparently  he  had  at  least  a  share  in  this 
rather  belated  contention,  though  it  is  not  clear  to  what 
extent. 

The  whole  matter  is  obscure,  but  in  March,  1849, 
Benton  moved  a  call  in  executive  session  for  the  pro- 


*  Wentworth's  Reminiscences,  p.  48.  Benton's  speech  at  Fayettc, 
Missouri,  September  I,  1849,  printed  in  pamphlet  form.  The 
(Philadelphia)  North  American  and  U.  S.  Gazette  for  August  15, 
16,  and  18,  1848.  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  1077. 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO    379 

ceedings  leading  to  the  treaty  and  on  March  22  moved 
that  the  protocol  "  ought  to  be  held  as  binding  upon  the 
United  States."  There  is  no  vote  recorded  on  this  mo 
tion,  but  later  the  Senate  apparently  voted  that  the  pro 
tocol,  not  having  been  passed  upon  by  the  Senate,  was 
no  part  of  the  treaty.  The  effort  ended  here,  but  it  will 
be  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  Foote  made  a  personal  attack 
upon  Benton  in  the  matter.  Foote  writes  *  that  he 
learned  that  Benton  was  "  in  collusion  with  the  Mexican 
minister  at  Washington  for  the  purpose  of  procuring  the 
rescission  of  the  Mexican  treaty,"  and  he  consequently 
made  a  short  speech  in  the  Senate,  4i  accompanying  the 
same,  as  far  as  I  was  capable,  with  appropriate  glances 
and  gestures"  towards  Benton.  The  speech  was  very 
pointed  and  was  brought  to  a  close  with  the  couplet, — 

"  Who  would  not  smile,  if  such  a  man  there  be? 
Who  would  not  blush,  if  Atticus  were  he?" 

Foote  adds  that  he  will  leave  it  to  those  present  to  say 
whether  there  was  "  real  *  blenching'  in  the  distrusted 
quarter,"  and  concludes  by  saying  that  on  the  pending 
proposition  only  two  speeches  were  made,  one  for  and  one 
against,  and  that  it  was  then  at  once  voted  down  with 
only  one  dissentient  vote. 

By  this  time  Benton  had  long  ceased  all  relations  of 
friendliness  with  Polk,  and  was  indeed  at  times  a  thorn 
in  the  side  of  the  administration.  Thus,  he  published  in 
the  New  York  Herald  of  September  26,  1848,  a  letter  to 
the  people  of  California,  dated  as  "  written  at  Washing 
ton  City  this  27th  day  of  August,  1848,  and  sent  by 
Colonel  Fremont,"  in  which  he  advised  the  people  to  meet 
in  convention  and  form  an  independent  government,  until 
Congress  should  act,  and  he  indicated  further  in  outline 
the  kind  of  government  they  should  adopt,  telling  them 

*  War  of  the  Rebellion,  pp.  101-112.  Foote' s  speech  is  printed 
in  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  498,  499. 


380       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

that  "  the  edicts  promulgated  by  your  temporary  govern 
ors  (Kearney  and  Mason,  each  an  ignoramus),  so  far  as 
these  edicts  went  to  change  the  law  of  the  land,  are  null 
and  void,  .  .  .  for  the  laws  of  a  conquered  country  re 
main  in  force  until  altered  by  the  proper  legislative  au 
thority."  This  "  extraordinary  letter,"  as  Polk  called  it, 
was  thought  to  be  meant  as  an  indication  to  the  Calif  or- 
nians  to  choose  Fremont  as  their  governor,  and  was  con 
sidered  in  the  Cabinet  on  September  30  with  a  view  to 
some  action  to  prevent  its  having  any  effect. 

What  led  to  the  breach  between  Polk  and  Benton  is 
not  altogether  clear,  but  it  is  evident  that  they  were  in 
the  first  place  men  of  too  different  natures  to  be  long  close 
to  each  other.  In  addition  to  this,  Benton  had  learned,  as 
has  been  seen,  that  one  member  of  the  Cabinet  was  en 
gaged  in  secretly  writing  articles  upon  the  subject  of 
Oregon  which  were  certainly  intended  to  injure  Benton 
and  others ;  and  he  at  least  suspected  that  other  members 
of  the  Cabinet  were  covertly  working  against  him.  He 
thus  naturally  grew  excited  and  suspicious,  and  it  is  by 
no  means  unlikely  that  he  came  to  suspect  the  truth,  that 
Polk  himself  was  not  entirely  free  from  connection  with 
these  doings. 

But,  however  much  all  this  may  have  prepared  the 
way,  the  chief  cause  was  probably  the  proceedings  as  to 
Fremont  and  his  court-martial.  Benton  could  take  up 
very  warmly  any  quarrel  in  regard  to  a  relative  or  friend, 
and  he  evidently  made  Fremont's  trouble  his  own.  In 
August  and  the  autumn  of  1847  P°lk  records  some  con 
versations  with  Benton  upon  this  subject,  in  which  the 
latter  spoke  with  much  excitement  and  feeling,  and  seems 
to  have  threatened  a  congressional  investigation,  unless 
the  court-martial  should  go  into  everything.  He  was 
highly  indignant  at  Fremont's  condemnation,  and  later 
visited  his  wrath  on  Fremont's  chief  rival  in  the  contest, 
Kearney. 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND   WILMOT    PROVISO    381 

Polk  thought  that  he  had  dealt  quite  as  leniently  with 
Fremont  as  Benton  had  a  right  to  expect  when  in  approv 
ing  the  finding  of  the  court-martial  he  had  remitted  the 
sentence  of  dismissal ;  but  when,  about  a  year  later  Kear- 
j  ney  was  nominated  for  promotion  near  the  end  of  the  ses 
sion,  Benton  opposed  his  confirmation,  and — so  Polk  was 
told  by  Hannegan — "  was  violent  beyond  what  is  usual 
even  for  him,  and  .  .  .  avowed  his  intention  to  speak  out 
the  balance  of  the  session  and  defeat  all  public  measures 
before  Congress  rather  than  suffer  a  vote  on  General 
Kearney's  nomination  to  be  taken."  The  debates  show 
that  Benton  did  make  a  bitter  arraignment  of  Kearney  in 
a  speech  of  most  portentous  length — extending  over  part 
or  all  of  the  executive  sessions  of  thirteen  days  and  cov 
ering  sixty-two  pages  of  the  Congressional  Globe;  but 
Kearney's  nomination  was  confirmed  by  a  vote  of  thirty- 
two  to  fourteen,  a  few  days  before  adjournment. 

Polk  recognized  the  Fremont  case  as  one  chief  cause 
of  the  break,  but  thought  that  a  question  of  patronage  was 
also  largely  back  of  it.  About  March,  1847,  Benton's 
son-in-law,  Jones,  asked  Polk  for  a  nomination  as  charge 
d'affaires  abroad,  but  Polk  gave  him  little  encourage 
ment,  thinking  he  had  no  claim  as  the  recent  editor  of  a 
"  federal"  newspaper.  On  March  29  Polk  writes  that  Ben- 
ton  asked  that  this  same  appointment  should  be  made ;  but 
when  Polk  gave  him  also  little  encouragement,  "  he  said 
he  merely  wished  to  present  the  application  and  leave  the 
disposition  of  it  with  me."  Polk  adds  that,  if  he  does  not 
appoint  Jones  "  it  will  be  the  cause  of  a  violent  outbreak 
of  opposition  to  me  by  General  Benton,"  and  continued  to 
think  that  his  refusal  was  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  their 
separation.  It  is  highly  unlikely  that  this  was  really  the 
case.  Benton  was  at  no  time  a  patronage-monger  and  he 
can  hardly  have  put  much  weight  on  this  matter,  though 
it  was  undoubtedly  a  case — and  the  only  one  I  know  of  in 
his  career — where  he  did  in  reality  ask  for  an  office  for  a 


382       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

near  connection,  contrary  to  the  principle  he  had  learned 
from  Macon.  There  is  no  essential  difference  between  a 
Senator's  asking  outright  for  an  office  for  his  son-in-law 
and  presenting  an  application  for  such  an  appointment. 

It  was  in  Folk's  character  to  attribute  great  weight  to 
such  a  question  of  patronage.  Though  he  came  to  the 
presidency  with  an  honorable  ambition  to  distinguish  his 
administration,  and  though  he  labored  hard  and  probably 
hurried  on  his  premature  death  by  efforts  to  accomplish 
this  end;  yet  he  was  not  very  far  from  what  must  be 
classed  as  "  a  mere  politician."  While  his  "  Diary"  shows 
him  often  disgusted  and  heart-weary  with  the  physical 
and  mental  exhaustion  caused  by  hordes  of  hungry  appli 
cants  for  office,  yet  it  equally  shows  the  vast  importance 
this  function  of  his  office  bore  in  his  mind,  and  pages  in 
the  "  Diary"  are  taken  up  with  detailed  considerations  as 
to  some  single  nomination  of  no  great  moment  and  the 
pros  and  cons  of  the  factional  questions  involved. 

One  other  event  of  the  latter  part  of  Folk's  term  must 
be  mentioned,  for  it  evidently  brought  him  a  great  deal  of 
mental  trouble,  and  to  Benton  it  brought  home  more 
strongly  that  conviction,  which  he  was  among  the  earliest 
of  our  public  men  to  reach,  that  an  effort  to  break  the 
Union  and  a  consequent  civil  war  were  near  at  hand. 
The  Southern  leaders,  chiefly  under  the  lead  of  the  great 
South  Carolinian  who  had  so  long  led  his  people  with 
syllogisms  as  absolutely  as  other  men  have  gained  their 
ends  with  blood  and  iron,  began  once  more  to  threaten  in 
loud  tones  and  to  make  every  endeavor  towards  the  pre 
sentation  of  a  united  front.  Much  was  heard  again  of 
intended  Southern  conventions,  and  the  members  of  Con 
gress  from  the  South  held  a  series  of  quasi  secret  meet 
ings,  at  which  the  interests  of  their  section  were  discussed 
and  every  effort  made  to  induce  the  members  to  join  as 
one  man  in  issuing  an  address  which  should  take  very 
ultra  ground.  Many  of  their  leading  men  were  by  this 


MEXICAN    WAR   AND    WILMOT    PROVISO    383 

time  fully  determined  not  to  remain  in  an  Union  which 
endangered  the  existence  of  slavery  or  in  which  they  were 
deprived  of  an  equality  of  power  for  their  protection. 
Proud  as  man  can  be,  masterful,  and  feeling  their  capacity 
to  lead,  they  could  not  brook  a  position  of  inferiority,  and 
many  were  already  wrought  up  to  the  pitch  of  leaving 
the  Union  they  had  so  long  loved  and  of  facing,  if  need 
be,  a  civil  war  to  establish  constitutional  rights  which  they 
undoubtedly  thought  they  had  and  which  would  not  have 
been  questioned  early  in  our  existence  under  the  Con 
stitution. 

Benton  was  invited — probably  as  a  Southern  man,  and 
evidently  by  some  one  who  wanted  to  oppose  the  pro 
ceeding — to  attend  these  meetings,  but  declined.  He 
must,  though,  have  been  kept  pretty  well  informed  by 
some  attending  member  of  what  was  going  on,  and  he 
devotes  a  good  deal  of  space  to  an  account  of  the  efforts 
to  force  upon  the  body  the  very  ultra  address  which  Cal- 
houn  had  prepared  and  of  the  various  softenings  which 
were  later  made  in  this  paper  in  the  effort  to  lead  to  una 
nimity.  The  chief  importance  of  the  whole  matter  here  is 
to  show  the  growth  of  Benton's  convictions  as  to  the  out 
come  of  the  course  pursued  by  the  South ;  but  it  should 
not  be  left  unsaid  that  these  meetings  caused  grave  sor 
row  to  Polk,  who,  whether  the  opinion  above  expressed 
as  to  his  faults  is  right  or  wrong,  had  at  least  always 
strongly  at  heart  the  good  of  the  American  people  as  he 
saw  it.  He  often  refers  to  the  meetings  in  his  "  Diary" 
and  writes  that  Houston  of  Alabama,  Cobb  and  Lumpkin 
of  Georgia,  and  McLane  of  Maryland,  told  him  that  they 
among  others  could  not  sign  the  address  which  Calhoun 
had  drawn  up.* 

*  Some  interesting  details  of  the  proceedings  at  these  meetings 
are  to  be  found  in  the  View,  ii.,  pp.  733-736,  and  in  Benton's  Fayette 
speech  of  September  I,  1849.  See  also  Folk's  Diary  for  January, 
1849,  passim. 


CHAPTER     XX 

THE  COMPROMISE  MEASURES  OF  1850  -  BENTON'S  OPPO 
SITION  TO  THE  OMNIBUS  BILL  -  ENCOUNTER  WITH 
FOOTE 


WHEN  on  March  4,  1849,  P°lk  handed  over  the  reins 
of  government  to  his  successor,  Zachary  Taylor,  the  state 
of  public  affairs  was  most  serious.  So  bitter  and  obsti 
nate  had  been  the  struggle  over  the  question  of  slavery  in 
the  newly  acquired  Territories  that  even  far  north  Oregon 
had  been  left  in  the  lurch  without  regular  government  for 
nearly  three  long  years  after  the  treaty  with  England, 
and  the  regions  acquired  from  Mexico  were  all  still 
without  any  government  except  temporary  ones  under 
the  mere  orders  of  the  President.  As  to  all  the  vast 
territory  now  included  within  the  limits  of  California, 
Nevada,  Utah,  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  and  parts  of 
Oklahoma,  Colorado,  Kansas,  and  of  Wyoming,  Con 
gress  had  been  able  to  agree  on  absolutely  nothing  since 
the  ratification  of  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Mexico  oh 
March  10,  1848;  and  Texas  was  threatening  and  bluster 
ing  over  her  claim  to  a  large  stretch  of  New  Mexico  in  a 
way  which  might  easily  have  led  to  a  clash  with  the  fed 
eral  army.  Threats  of  disunion  were  frequently  heard 
from  high  officials  in  the  South,  and  so  far  had  the  strug 
gle  gone  that  it  was  clear  some  way  of  escape  must  soon 
be  found  or  the  country  would  break  up. 

It  was  in  this  state  of  public  affairs  that  the  Thirty- 
first  Congress  met  on  December  3,  1849.  Our  annals 
hardly  contain  a  session  so  full  of  pathos  and  dramatic 
interest.  The  veteran  Clay  had  come  out  of  his  retire 
ment,  fired  with  the  hope  of  saving  the  country  he  loved 
384 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  385 

so  well,  and  was  now  once  more  to  be  seen  sitting  in  the 
Senate.  Old  and  infirm,  with  the  seal  of  death  visibly 
on  him,  weak  and  at  times  almost  prostrated  by  the  labors 
of  the  session,  he  yet  soon  took  the  lead  and  showed  re 
markable  strength  for  a  man  of  his  years  and  so  near  the 
end.  The  towering  intellectual  giant  Webster  was  there, 
too,  far  on  in  the  decline  of  his  powers  and  influence,  but 
with  a  stronger  hold  on  life  than  either  Clay  or  Calhoun, 
the  third  man  of  the  Senatorial  triumvirate  of  so  many 
years.  Calhoun  was  nearer  the  end  of  all  things  upon  this 
bank  and  shoal  of  time  than  either  of  his  great  compeers, 
but  still  flashed  out  now  and  then  with  his  old  intellectual 
fire. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  session,  inspired  by  a  patriotic, 
if  possibly  dim,  desire  to  help  on  a  settlement  of  the  ques 
tions  which  were  distracting  the  country  he  still  wanted  to 
be  able  to  love,  Calhoun  had  gone  to  Clay  and  resumed 
the  pleasant  relations  which  had  long  been  broken  be 
tween  them,  and  it  is  said  that  Benton,  too,  had  done  the 
same  thing  about  two  years  earlier.  As  the  session  wore 
on,  Calhoun's  powers  waned,  and  when  he  died  on  the 
last  day  of  March,  the  animosities  of  the  hour  were  for 
the  time  forgotten  over  the  bier  of  one  of  our  very  great 
est  public  men. 

It  is  maybe  natural  that  those  of  Calhoun's  period  and 
a  few  decades  later  should  look  upon  him  as  Benton  did, 
but  history  must  accord  the  great  South  Carolinian  a 
high  measure  of  praise.  And  for  pathetic  interest,  where 
is  his  equal  to  be  found  ?  Beyond  doubt  as  a  young  man 
full  to  the  brim  with  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  whole 
United  States,  he  only  became  sectional  and  took  up  a 
course  which  led  in  the  end  to  disunion,  when  he  felt  that 
his  Lares  and  Penates  were  in  peril.  Whether  wrong 
or  right,  his  short  human  vision  drove  him  to  the  con 
viction  that  his  children,  his  family,  his  neighbors,  his 
State,  his  section  of  our  common  country,  were  in  griev- 

25 


386       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

ous  danger  of  unspeakable  horrors  from  the  drift  of  pub 
lic  events,  and  he  then  buckled  on  his  armor  to  save  those 
who  were  nearest  to  him  on  earth.  One  of  his  final  utter 
ances  was  to  express  a  fervent  wish  for  "  one  hour  more 
to  speak  in  the  Senate,  when  I  can  do  more  good  than 
on  any  past  occasion  in  my  life,"  and  the  very  last  words 
he  spoke  on  earth  were  "  The  South,  the  South,  God 
knows  what  will  become  of  her !" 

No  one  can  doubt  that  these  fleeting  visions  of  his 
latest  hours  were  a  true  index  to  his  real  longings,  and 
the  latter  in  particular  tells  the  thought  for  years  upper 
most  in  the  mind  of  this  at  times  seer,  who  as  far  back 
as  1838  had  warned  the  Senate  that  slavery  was  "  the 
only  question  of  sufficient  magnitude  and  potency  to 
divide  this  Union;  and  divide  it  it  would,  or  drench  the 
country  in  blood,  if  not  arrested:"  and  who  in  1849  f°re- 
told  that  crime  which  is  to-day  causing  the  American 
people  so  much  sober  thought,  when  he  wrote  in  the 
Southern  Address  that  in  the  event  of  emancipation  the 
vote  and  the  right  to  hold  office  would  be  given  to  the 
negroes  as  a  means  of  securing  the  political  control  of 
the  South.  Where  is  the  man,  whose  life  is  so  free  from 
awful  human  blunders,  that  he  can  afford  to  blame  Cal- 
houn,  even  though  we  must  accord  a  far  higher  measure 
of  statesmanship  as  to  this  point  to  those  who,  like  Ben- 
ton,  foresaw  from  the  start  both  the  folly  of  the  effort  to 
divide  the  Union  and  the  dreadful  truth  that  Calhoun 
was  steering  his  people  clear  of  Scylla  only  to  plunge 
them  headlong  on  a  ragged  and  far  more  destructive 
Charybdis  ? 

Few  scenes  in  history  are  so  deeply  dramatic  as  that 
of  the  last  speech  of  this  great  leader  in  the  Senate.  Far 
too  weak  himself  to  give  it  utterance,  he  could  but  sit  by 
pale  and  wan,  with  hollow  eyes  flashing  forth  now  and 
then  to  give  emphasis  to  some  point,  while  the  Virginian 
Mason  trolled  forth  this  last  and  at  bottom  hopeless  mes- 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  387 

sage  of  the  greatest  of  the  Southern  leaders.  In  the  cold 
reason  of  its  written  words  and  in  the  splendid  color  given 
to  it  by  the  fine  presence  and  full  commanding  tones  of 
the  reader,  whose  voice  is  said  to  have  rung  through  the 
hall  like  a  blast  from  a  trumpet,  there  resounded  once 
more,  though  his  hearers  knew  it  not,  fateful  notes  of  sor 
row  and  deep  despair,  which  foretold  the  approach  of 
what  has  since  been  called  the  End  of  an  Era.* 

These  events  and  others  added  pathos  and  interest  to 
the  session,  which  turned  out  to  be  a  very  long  one, 
full  of  conflict  and  bitter  disappointment  for  every  one, 
and  for  months  it  seemed  as  if  absolutely  no  step  forward 
could  be  made.  One  proposition  after  another  was  of 
fered,  just  as  had  been  the  case  under  Polk,  but  the  grirri 
determination  of  both  sides  to  have  their  own  way  seemed 
only  to  grow  stronger.  California  was  in  a  condition  to 
entitle  her  to  admission  and  soon  appeared  at  the  doors 
of  Congress  with  a  constitution  which  prohibited  slavery, 
but  the  South  was  bitterly  opposed  to  her  admission,  for 
with  her  in  the  Union  as  a  free  State,  the  equality  of  the 
sections  would  for  the  first  time  be  broken. 

Hence  every  effort  was  made  to  put  off  this  evil  hour 
or  at  least  to  make  her  admission  conditional  upon  the 
concession  of  other  provisions  which  should  secure  ample 
slave  territory  to  the  South  in  the  future.  Clay,  who 
soon  took  the  lead  in  the  compromise  measures,  had  origi 
nally  intended  that  the  bill  to  admit  California  should 
be  passed  on  its  own  merits  alone,  but  Southern  members 
dragooned  him  into  the  belief  that  the  efforts  at  com 
promise  would  fail,  if  this  were  done,  and  that  the  very 
same  bill  which  admitted  her  must  contain  measures  satis- 

*  Foote's  War  of  the  Rebellion,  pp.  116,  120.  Gustavus  M. 
Pinckney's  Life  of  Calhoun,  p.  211.  F.  R.  Marvin's  The  Last 
Words  (Real  and  Traditional)  of  Distinguished  Men  and  Women, 
p.  28.  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  29.  View,  ii.,  pp. 
139,  735-  O.  O.  Howard's  Life  of  Zachary  Taylor,  p.  357. 


388       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

factory  to  the  South  as  to  the  establishment  of  govern 
ments  in  the  new  Territories.  They  of  course  feared  that 
otherwise  they  would  find  themselves  with  California  in 
the  Union  and  their  equal  power  gone,  and  that  then  they 
would  fail  to  establish  slavery  in  the  other  newly  acquired 
Territories.* 

The  result  was  that  at  length,  on  May  8,  1849,  Clay 
reported  three  bills  to  settle  the  whole  subject  from  his 
special  committee  of  thirteen.  The  two  minor  ones  re 
spectively  contained  a  new  fugitive  slave  law  and  abol 
ished  the  slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia;  while 
the  chief  measure  admitted  California;  established  gov 
ernments  in  the  remaining  Territories  with  provisions  as 
to  slavery,  the  meaning  of  which  was  not  then  clear  and 
which  became  later  a  subject  of  further  controversy; 
and  settled  the  Texan  contest  by  an  artificial  line  and  by 
paying  her  a  sum  of  money  for  releasing  her  claim. 

This  last  measure,  which  soon  came  to  be  called  the 
"  Omnibus  Bill"  in  derision  of  the  incongruous  nature 
of  the  provisions  contained  in  it,  was  at  once  taken  up 
and  was  most  bitterly  opposed  by  Benton.  Indeed,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  he  did  far  more  than  any  other  man 
to  defeat  it.  In  the  early  stages,  before  it  had  been  re 
ported,  he  showed  no  little  desire  to  unite  in  some  com 
promise  to  relieve  the  distracted  country,  and  with  this 
view  not  only  accepted  material  alterations  of  his  own 
proposals  made  by  Clay,  but  went  out  of  his  way  to  thank 
the  latter  "  from  the  bottom  of  his  heart  ...  for  his 
frank,  manly,  noble  speech"  of  February  5  and  6,  which, 
Benton  thought,  had  done  so  much  to  quiet  the  public 
mind;  but,  when  the  report  of  May  8  and  the  Omnibus 


*  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  864,  865.  Foote  was 
evidently  the  leader  among  those  who  induced  Clay  thus  to  change 
his  plans.  Foote's  War  of  the  Rebellion,  pp.  118-120,  174.  C.  G., 
3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  365-369. 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  389 

Bill  came  in,  Benton  evidently  looked  upon  the  whole  plan 
as  a  complete  surrender  to  the  most  ultra  Southern  men. 

His  contention  was  that  California  had  a  right  to  be 
considered  on  her  own  merits  alone  and  that  it  was  all 
wrong  to  tie  up  her  fate  with  that  of  other  measures  hav 
ing  no  relation  to  her.  All  the  States  in  the  past,  he  in 
sisted,  had  been  admitted  or  denied  admission  without 
being  clogged  with  extraneous  measures,  and  there  was 
no  reason  for  the  exception  in  her  case.  In  reply  to 
the  half -expressed  explanation  that  only  in  this  way 
could  the  necessary  majority  be  secured,  he  answered 
with  considerable  forecast  of  coming  events  that  so  many 
members  would  be  unalterably  opposed  to  some  one  of  the 
many  provisions  of  the  Omnibus  that  it  would  be  sure  to 
fail  in  the  end,  and  that  there  was  a  far  better  chance  of 
success  in  the  regular  way  by  taking  up  each  measure 
separately. 

From  May  8  until  the  very  last  day  of  July,  when  the 
conglomerate  Omnibus  Bill  had  been  lopped  of  one  sec 
tion  after  another,  until  it  was  merely  a  bill  to  provide  a 
territorial  government  for  Utah  and  wras  passed  in  this 
shape  with  Benton's  aid,  he  opposed  the  scheme  with  every 
means  in  his  power.  When  Clay  dramatically  counted  off 
on  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand  the  "  five  gaping  wounds" 
of  the  country,  Benton  denied  their  existence  and  sug 
gested  that  that  number  of  wounds  had  been  selected  by 
the  orator  simply  because  Clay  was  formed  like  other 
men,  and  "when  the  fingers  gave  out,"  the  gaping 
wounds  gave  out  also. 

And  on  another  occasion  he  greatly  amused  the  Sen 
ate  by  ridiculing  the  Omnibus  Bill  as  a  mere  "  medley  of 
five  old  bills  introduced  by  different  members,"  which 
when  separate  had  had  no  special  virtue,  but  had  now 
become  remarkably  sweet-smelling  by  being  bundled  to 
gether  ;  he  could,  he  said,  only  compare  it  to  a  contested 
question  of  patent  medicines  then  raging  as  to  the  relative 


390       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

virtues  or  vices  of  the  "  Old  Dr.  Jacob  Townsend's  and 
the  young  Dr.  Samuel  Townsend's  Sarsaparilla,"  both 
extracted  from  the  same  root,  yet  the  one  doctor  strongly 
intimated  that  the  extract  offered  for  sale  by  the  other 
was  poisonous. 

In  numerous  instances  during  these  weeks  of  debate 
involved  in  bitter  personalities  with  Clay  and  others  he 
was  beyond  question  often  disorderly  and  his  actions  re 
mind  one  at  times  of  some  noble  animal  brought  to  bay, 
lashing  his  sides  with  fury  and  blindly  attacking  friend 
as  well  as  foe.  So  much  alone  indeed  had  he  come  to  be, 
so  apart  from  his  political  friends  of  the  past,  and  yet  so 
far  away  from  the  position  of  the  Northern  opponents  of 
the  measure,  that  he  evidently  felt  at  times  his  awful  iso 
lation,  and  it  is  with  a  sense  of  pain  that  one  finds  this 
giant  of  strength  petulantly  complaining  that  he  is  always 
called  to  order,  others  never. 

Taylor  was  well  known  to  be  opposed  to  the  Omnibus 
Bill,  had  no  patience  with  the  everlasting  threats  of  dis 
union,  and  was  probably  determined  to  use  force  if  such 
a  step  was  seriously  attempted.  Indeed,  he  pretty  clearly 
intimated  this  purpose  in  his  only  message,  being  led  so 
to  do  by  a  visit  from  Calhoun  in  which  the  latter  urged 
him  to  say  nothing  upon  the  subject.  It  is  said,  too,  that, 
shortly  before  his  death,  Taylor  was  preparing  a  message 
announcing  this  same  purpose  and  consulted  Benton  about 
it,  and  that  it  was  understood  between  them  that  Benton 
would  defend  the  message  in  the  Senate.* 

During  the  course  of  the  debates  Benton  had  undoubt 
edly  demonstrated  by  an  elaborate  examination  of  Mexi 
can  legislation  upon  the  subject,  which  he  quoted  in  the 
original  and  then  translated,  that  slavery  had  been  abol- 


*  Letter  of  reminiscences  to  the  present  writer  from  Benton's 
son-in-law,  the  late  Colonel  Richard  T.  Jacob,  who  wrote  that  Benton 
spoke  of  the  matter  to  him  several  times.  View,  ii.,  p.  740. 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  391 

ished  by  Mexico  and  did  not  therefore  exist  in  our  new 
possessions.  Here  was  a  most  serious  trouble  for  the 
South,  which  required  more  syllogisms  to  be  got  over, 
and  for  which  they  were  not  likely  to  be  thankful  to  him. 

Again,  when  the  Omnibus  Bill  had  been  trimmed  al 
most  to  death  near  the  end  of  July,  he  boasted  that  he 
had  "  expressed  the  belief  that  there  has  been  no  moment 
in  the  progress  of  this  business  in  which  there  was  not  a 
majority  of  Senators  in  favor  of  the  general  object  of 
each  measure  in  this  bill."  And  finally,  after  the  meas 
ures  had  all  passed  separately,  he  analyzed  the  vote  and 
showed  that  only  eighteen  members  could  possibly  be 
counted  as  having  voted  for  every  one  of  them,  though 
each  bill  had  got  through  separately  with  majorities 
varying  from  eighteen  to  ten.  And  as  another  evidence 
of  how  mankind  always  delight  to  maintain  that  they 
have  been  right,  he  insisted  that  he  had  five  years  before 
foreseen  all  these  troubles  and  that  his  bill  of  February 
5,  1845,  to  provide  for  the  admission  of  Texas  would 
have  settled  them  all  in  advance. 

It  is  needless  to  follow  in  detail  his  bitter,  indignant, 
and  often  disorderly,  struggle;  and  it  will  be  enough  to 
say  that  he  voted  of  course  for  the  bill  to  admit  California 
and  for  those  to  provide  Territorial  governments  for  Utah 
and  New  Mexico;  he  voted  also  for  the  bill  to  suppress 
the  slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and  said  that 
"  with  respect  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  this  District, 
I  am  one  of  those  that  believe  it  is  covered  by  the  Con 
stitutional  power  of  Congress.  I  am  one  of  those  who 
believe,  from  the  foundation  of  the  government  to  the 
present  day,  that  it  ought  not  to  be  touched  while  slavery 
exists  in  the  States  from  which  the  District  was  ceded. 
And  surely  Congress  has  shown  no  disposition  to 
touch  it." 

He  opposed  the  bill  to  fix  the  boundaries  of  Texas, 
thinking  the  State  entirely  too  large ;  and  on  the  fugitive 


392       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

slave  bill  he  did  not  vote  at  all  nor  does  he  seem  to  have 
spoken  in  the  debate.  He  explains  that  he  looked  upon 
the  new  and  elaborate  bill  as  quite  unnecessary  and  ill- 
advised,  and  that  he  would  willingly  have  voted  in  favor 
of  a  measure — which  was  made  necessary  by  judicial  de 
cisions — merely  to  create  a  set  of  federal  officials,  in  place 
of  those  of  the  States,  to  carry  out  the  existing  statutes 
upon  the  subject.* 

It  has  been  said  that  the  session  did  not  go  by  with 
out  seeing  Benton  engaged  in  several  angry  collisions,  and 
one  of  these  stands  forth  in  special  prominence,  consti 
tuting,  I  think,  the  only  instance  in  which  the  Senate 
chamber  has  witnessed  one  member  draw  a  pistol  on 
another.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Benton  was  an 
irascible  man,  but  the  blame  for  this  particular  quarrel 
rests  beyond  all  question  with  his  opponent,  who  evi 
dently  aimed  to  insult  Benton  so  grossly  as  to  force  him 
to  a  duel. 

Henry  S.  Foote  was  at  all  times  of  his  career  most 
erratic,  ever  changing  from  one  view  to  another,  and  was 
on  numerous  occasions  involved  in  contests  with  words  or 
fists  with  numbers  of  men  who  came  in  contact  with  him. 
To  say  nothing  of  many  minor  collisions  in  debate  with 
his  colleague  from  Mississippi  and  political  rival,  Jeffer 
son  Davis,  as  well  as  with  others,  he  is  said  to  have  had  a 
personal  encounter  with  Davis  at  the  breakfast  table  of 
their  boarding-house  in  Washington,  and  again  with 
Cameron  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate ;  and  on  another  oc 
casion,  after  some  dispute  with  Fremont  in  the  Senate,  the 
contest  was  renewed  in  the  lobby  and  Foote  knocked  Fre- 

*  Benton's  speech  to  show  that  slavery  did  not  exist  in  the 
regions  acquired  from  Mexico  is  to  be  found  in  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong., 
ist  Sess.,  pp.  430-432.  The  quotation  of  his  opinion  as  to  the  aboli 
tion  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  is  in  C.  G.,  31  st  Cong., 
ist  Sess.,  p.  712.  For  his  opinions  on  the  fugitive  slave  law,  see 
View,  ii.,  pp.  778,  779;  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  657. 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  393 

mont  down.  Foote  is,  moreover,  described  by  a  modern 
writer  as  having  been  "  irrepressible  ...  a  garrulous  lit 
tle  man  who  wore  green  spectacles,"  and  the  philosophic 
reader  will  not  fail  to  find  in  this  description  precisely 
those  waspish  traits  likely  to  goad  to  fury  a  man  of  Ben- 
ton's  make-up. 

But  far  more  is  to  be  added.  For  as  much  as  ten 
years  Foote  had  been  assailing  Benton  in  the  press  and  on 
the  stump,  and  at  the  opening  of  this  very  session  of  Con 
gress  had  made  a  bitter  fight  in  the  Democratic  caucus 
against  his  selection  as  chairman  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and 
after  a  fight  of  two  days  had  succeeded  in  defeating  him 
by  a  majority  of  one  vote.  Again,  Benton  knew  very  well 
that  Foote  was  one  of  his  leading  enemies  in  the  desperate 
and  losing  struggle  he  was  then  engaged  in  to  save  his 
political  future  in  Missouri,  and  Foote  was,  moreover,  the 
leading  character  in  dragooning  Clay  into  that  policy, 
which  was  so  persistently  opposed  by  Benton,  of  uniting 
all  the  principal  compromise  measures  in  one  bill. 

It  was  the  opinion,  too,  of  some  who  shared  in  the 
events  of  the  time  that  Foote  had  been  tacitly  selected  by 
Southern  members  to  taunt  Benton,  and  he  was  at  least 
so  grossly  insulting  in  several  instances,  before  his  op 
ponent  took  the  law  into  his  own  hands,  that  there  can  be 
no  doubt  he  was  doing  his  utmost  to  goad  Benton  on  to  a 
duel. 

Thus,  on  January  16,  when  Benton  introduced  a  bill 
to  reduce  the  limits  of  Texas,  Foote,  without  any  visible 
reason  except  that  the  former  favored  a  different  policy 
from  that  urged  by  himself,  broke  out  at  once,  saying  of 
Benton,  among  other  criticisms  of  a  like  nature :  "  It  is 
he  who  has  taken  it  upon  himself  to  wander  off  some 
thousands  of  miles  into  the  bosom  of  his  own  State,  and 
to  inveigh,  in  language  of  the  coarsest  scurrility  and  most 
envenomed  abuse,  against  men  whom  he  dares  not  meet 
here  in  debate  .  .  .  This,  sir,  is  the  heroic  chieftain,  who, 


394       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

when  far  distant  from  the  objects  of  his  hostility,  de 
nounces  them  as  traitors,  disunionists,  and  villains,  and 
threatens,  on  getting  sight  of  them  in  the  Senate  house, 
to  demolish  them  forever;  but  who,  when  he  gets  here 
once  more  among  us,  is  either  mysteriously  and  stoically 
silent,  or,  assuming  a  truly  lamb-like  meekness  of  aspect 
and  manner,  and  a  soft  nasality  of  intonation,  is  seen  to 
coo  round  the  Senate  chamber  '  as  gently  as  any  sucking 
dove.' '  This  tirade  was  kept  up  for  some  time  and 
Foote  was  charging  that  Benton's  recent  "  inflammatory 
addresses"  on  slavery  in  Missouri  had  led  to  large  num 
bers  of  slaves  making  their  escape  into  Illinois,  when 
(as  the  Debates  record)  Benton  left  his  seat,  walked  to 
wards  the  door,  and  passed  rapidly  through  it. 

"  See,"  went  on  Foote,  "  he  flies  as  did  those  deluded  sons  of 
Africa.  .  .  .  He  escapes  me  just  as  I  was  about  to  compare  him  to 
that  degenerate  Roman  senator,  whom  Cicero  once  addressed  in 
language  that  will  never  perish,  exclaiming  in  the  hearing  of  such 
men  as  Caesar,  and  Cato,  and  Brutus,  with  majestic  cadence: 
'  Quousque  tandem  abutere  Catilina  nostra  patientia?'  As  Tully 
said  of  that  same  degenerate  Roman,  I  feel  that  I  can  say  now,  in 
behalf  of  myself  and  of  my  friends,  in  relation  to  him  who  has 
just  departed  from  our  presence,  '  Tandem  aliquando  Quirites,  L. 
Catilinam  furentem  audacia,  scelus  anhelantem  pestem  patria  nefarie 
molientem  vobis  atque  huic  urbi  ferrum  ftammamque  minitantem,  ex 
urbe,  vel  ejecimus,  vel  emissimus,  vel  ipsum  egredientem  verbis  prose- 
cuti  sumus/  I  may  well  add:  ' Abiit — excessit — evasit — erupit!'" 

Benton  took  no  further  notice  of  this  attack,  but  Foote 
.was  not  yet  content.  In  the  middle  of  February,  it  is  evi 
dent  that  Benton  had  half  induced  Clay  to  agree  to  take 
the  lead  on  a  proposed  committee  to  which  should  be  re 
ferred  the  constitution  of  California,  without  any  of  the 
other  pending  measures.  This  point  was  then  the  crux, 
for  the  South  doggedly  insisted  that  all  the  bills  should 
be  consolidated,  and  Foote  was  about  to  urge  on  the  plan 
of  a  grand  committee  of  thirteen  to  settle  every  point  at 
issue  at  one  time,  and  was  hectoring  Clay  as  to  his  course, 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  395 

and  angrily  objecting  to  the  "  attempt  to  smuggle  Cali 
fornia  into  the  Union." 

In  one  of  his  speeches  Foote  expressed  a  hope  that 
the  Senator  over  the  way  [Benton]  would  not  "  grow 
restive  under  my  strictures  and  be  seen  again  precipitately 
to  fly  from  our  presence,"  and  then  went  on  with  another 
personal  attack.  Benton  was  taunted  with  approaching 
defeat  in  Missouri,  with  being  now  "  solitary  and  alone" 
indeed  in  the  Senate,  with  being  "  at  least  as  much  dis 
tinguished  for  imposing  nasality  of  intonation  as  for  his 
learning  or  eloquence,"  and  these  mere  gad-fly  stings  were 
coupled  with  the  far  more  serious  insinuation  that  he  was 
personally  interested  in  the  question  of  California's  ad 
mission  on  behalf  of  his  son-in-law,  Fremont. 

Of  this  attack,  too,  Benton,  with  a  self-restraint  quite 
unknown  to  his  younger  days,  took  no  notice,  but  once 
more  it  was  renewed,  on  March  26.  Benton  had  claimed 
to  be  the  friend  of  California,  because  he  insisted  that  the 
bill  relating  to  her  should  at  once  and  alone  be  taken  up, 
and  Foote  then  ridiculed  the  claim  and  attacked  Benton  as 
the  would-be  "  Caesar — Napoleon — Pater  Senatus — Cen 
sor  Morum"  of  the  chamber.  Benton  replied  "  I  mean 
by  the  friends  of  California  those  who  are  in  favor  of 
admitting  the  State  without  remanding  her  to  the  terri 
torial  condition,  and  without  dissolving  the  Union  on  ac 
count  of  her  admission.  That  is  the  line  of  distinction  I 
make,  sir.  Now,  sir,  I  am  understood. 

"  Mr.  President,  I  believe  this  is  the  American  Senate. 
I  believe,  by  the  laws  of  this  Senate,  that  personalities  and 
attacks  upon  motives  are  forbidden.  I  also  believe  that 
they  are  forbidden  by  the  rules  of  decorum.  This  much 
I  believe;  and  now,  sir,  I  will  tell  you  what  I  know;  I 
know  that  the  attacks  made  upon  my  motives  to-day  and 
heretofore  in  this  chamber,  are  false  and  cowardly." 

Foote  replied  at  once,  referring  to  Benton's  objection 
to  personalities  and  then  went  on : 


396       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  After  which — ay,  the  very  next  second — he  is  heard  to  pour 
forth  a  full  tide  of  as  offensive  personalities  as  were  ever  listened 
to  in  the  Senate,  or  as  could  have  been  uttered  with  equal  volubility 
and  unction  by  a  regular  ale-house  disputant.  Yes,  sir,  this  gentle 
man — more  renowned  than  any  of  modern  times  for  the  incessant 
eructation  of  the  terms  of  coarse  and  low  revilement  and  not 
wholly  free  from  the  frailty  of  indulging  in  another  sort  of  person 
ality  which  may  be  called  personality  egotistical — now  whiningly 
complains  that  personalities  have  been  resorted  to  for  his  annoy- 
ment;  .  .  .  and  now,  sir,  I  will  formally  announce  that  there  are 
certain  stains  which  have  most  hideously  blemished  the  character 
of  the  honorable  Senator  from  Missouri,  since  the  days  of  his 
early  manhood;  that  the  unfavorable  anticipations,  awakened  by 
the  dawn  of  his  career  have  been  quite  strikingly  realized  by  the 
meridian  of  development  through  which  the  honorable  Senator  has 
now  passed ;  that  there  are  incidents  in  his  history  of  somewhat 
recent  occurrence,*  which  might  well  relieve  any  man  of  honor  from 
the  obligation  to  recognize  him  as  a  fitting  antagonist ;  yet  is  it, 
notwithstanding,  true  that  if  the  Senator  from  Missouri  will  deign 
to  acknowledge  himself  responsible  to  the  laws  of  honor  he  shall 
have  a  very  early  opportunity  of  proving  his  prowess  in  contest  .  ith 
one  over  whom  I  hold  perfect  control,  or  if  he  feels  in  the  least 
degree  aggrieved  at  anything  which  has  fallen  from  me  now  or 
formerly,  he  shall,  on  demanding  it,  have  full  redress  accorded  him 
according  to  the  said  laws  of  honor.  I  do  not  denounce  him  as  a 
coward, — such  language  is  unfitted  for  this  audience, — but  if  he 
wishes  to  patch  up  his  reputation  for  courage,  now  greatly  on  the 
wane,  he  will  certainly  have  an  opportunity  of  doing  so  whenever 
he  makes  known  his  desire  in  the  premises." 

Benton  at  once  angrily  pronounced  it  "  cowardly  to 
give  insults  where  they  cannot  be  chastised.  Can  I  take 
a  cudgel  to  him  here  ?"  he  asked,  and  there  was  for  some 
time  great  disorder.  And  the  next  day  he  called  the  sub 
ject  up  and  announced  formally  that,  if  the  Senate  failed 
in  the  future  to  protect  him  from  such  attacks,  he  intended 
"  to  protect  himself,  cost  what  it  may."  He  charged,  too, 

*  Referring  presumably  to  Benton's  threatened  duel  with  Butler, 
in  which  Foote  had  been  second  for  Butler.  The  reference  to 
alleged  early  stains  on  Benton's  character  was  doubtless  to  what 
has  been  called  the  cravat  story. 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  397 

that  the  report  of  Foote's  speeches  in  the  encounter  of 
March  26  as  published  in  the  Union  was  untrue,  and 
particularized  a  clause  in  which  Foote  was  made  to  say 
of  Benton :  "At  present  he  is  shielded  by  his  age,  his 
open  disavowal  of  the  obligatory  force  of  the  laws  of 
honor,  and  his  Senatorial  privileges."  This,  said  Benton, 
'*'  is  an  afterthought,  an  invention  of  cowardice  ...  a 
malicious  and  systematic  falsehood,"  and  he  denied 
having  ever  disavowed  the  laws  of  honor,  even  in  the 
sense  intended  by  the  speaker.  The  reporters  had,  he  said, 
brought  to  him  their  notes  of  his  remarks,  but  he  had  de 
clined  so  much  as  to  look  at  them,  and  he  maintained  that 
that  was  "  the  only  way  that  honor  can  ever  do  ...  [in 
regard  to  the]  report  of  personal  scenes."  It  was  evidently 
well  known,  and  Foote  admitted,  that  he  had  revised  the 
notes  of  his  remarks  and  conceded  that  he  was  not  sure 
of  having  used  the  language  Benton  quoted  as  well  as 
some  other  remarks  in  the  reported  speech,  and  that  he 
had  also  omitted  some  parts  of  what  he  did  actually  say. 

It  is  worthy  of  note,  as  a  sample  of  the  consistency  of 
the  famous  code  of  those  days  that  these  emendations  and 
omissions  in  his  own  interest  were  made  by  Foote  in  the 
presence  of  various  Senators  among  whom  he  mentioned 
King  and  Butler ;  and  that  he  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to 
omit  in  toto  from  his  reported  speech  by  far  the  most  out 
rageous  paragraph  he  had  uttered,  in  which  he  charged 
Benton  with  having  on  a  certain  occasion  had  an  attack 
of  "  shaking  of  the  limbs  and  .  .  .  blanching  of  the  coun 
tenance  under  the  influence  of  fear  I  have  witnessed.  .  .  . 
At  present  he  is  shielded  by  his  own  established  coward 
ice."  Foote  closed  by  again  offering  to  meet  Benton  in 
duel,  and  urged  the  latter  to  send  a  challenge  or  say  he 
would  accept  one. 

It  is  evident  that  by  this  time  the  Senate  was  alive  to 
the  harmfulness  of  these  scenes,  and  a  week  later  Vice- 
President  Fillmore  announced  that  he  had  considered  the 


398       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

matter  and  was  of  opinion,  despite  the  fact  that  the  prac 
tice  had  been  otherwise  since  Calhoun's  vice-presidency, 
that  he  had  power  of  his  own  motion  to  call  members  to 
order,  and  intended  to  do  so.  Peace  then  continued  for  a 
time,  but  the  storm  broke  out  once  more  on  April  17. 

On  this  occasion  Benton  had  criticised  the  language 
of  the  Southern  Address  in  a  very  mild  way, — the  strong 
est  thing  he  said  against  it  being  that  it  was  at  the  root  of 
the  agitation  which  had  thrown  the  country  into  a  flame, 
.and  that  it  had  cried  "  wolf,"  where  there  was  no  wolf, — 
but  Foote  then  got  up  and  contrasted  the  high  characters 
of  the  signers  of  the  Southern  Address  with  that  of  "  their 
calumniators,  no  matter  who  they  may  be,"  and  a  few 
minutes  later  showed  that  he  meant  to  indicate  Benton  as 
the  calumniator-in-chief ;  but  this  point  was  barely 
reached  when  Benton  arose  hurriedly,  pushed  his  chair 
from  him,  and  advanced  towards  Foote,  whose  seat  was 
only  about  twenty  feet  distant  and  in  the  same  back  row 
as  Benton's.  Foote  moved  down  the  aisle  towards  the 
Vice-President's  desk  with  Benton  following  him,  while 
Dodge  of  Wisconsin  took  hold  of  the  latter's  arm, — they 
were  friends  of  years'  standing, — and  said,  "  Don't  com 
promise  yourself."  Benton  soon  turned  and  was  going 
back  with  Dodge  to  his  seat,  without  any  struggle,  when 
he  saw  that  Foote  held  a  pistol  in  his  hand  and  broke  out 
at  once  into  a  fury  of  excitement.  "  I  have  no  pistol !  I 
disdain  to  carry  arms!  Let  him  fire!  Let  the  assassin 
fire !"  he  cried  out  and  threw  open  his  coat,  continuing  for 
some  moments  to  repeat  his  exclamations. 

The  Senate  account  has  it  that  he  then  struggled  with 
those  about  him,  as  if  desirous  of  approaching  Foote, 
while  Bradbury  denies  that  there  was  at  any  time  a  strug 
gle  by  others  either  to  hold  him  or  to  take  him  back  to  his 
seat,  and  says,  "  The  only  interference  with  his  free  action 
was  Dodge's  taking  hold  of  his  arm."  Most  accounts 
speak  of  Benton  as  being  in  a  fury  of  rage,  while  John 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  399 

Wentworth  describes  him  as  "  the  least  moved  of  any 
man  in  the  Senate  .  .  .  standing  emotionless  [and  ex 
claiming],  with  a  loud  and  defiant  voice,"  and  adds  that 
generally,  in  anger,  "  he  was  like  a  brazen  statue,  his  flesh 
all  solidified  and  every  muscle  strongly  drawn  and  fixed." 
Benton  then  forced  Bradbury  and  Dodge,  despite  their 
protest  that  no  one  would  doubt  his  word,  to  search  every 
pocket  on  his  person,  and  not  even  a  penknife  was  to  be 
found. 

Meanwhile  Foote,  who  had  early  in  the  encounter 
drawn  and  cocked  a  revolver  and  held  it  in  his  hand  muz- 
,  zle  down,  gave  up  the  weapon  to  Dickinson.  A  stormy 
scene  ensued,  in  which  Benton  charged  that  Foote  had 
come  to  the  Senate  intending  to  assassinate  him,  and 
Foote  denied  any  such  intention,  and  explained  that  his 
friends  had  advised  him,  after  Benton's  threats,  that,  as 
the  weaker  man  physically,  he  had  best  go  armed,  so  as  to 
protect  himself  from  assault.  He  said  also  that  he  had 
supposed  that  Benton  was  armed. 

Efforts  were  made  by  third  parties  to  go  on  with  the 
regular  business  of  the  Senate,  but  Benton  said,  "  We  are 
not  going  to  get  off  in  this  way"  and  insisted  that,  if  the 
Senate  did  not  take  notice  of  the  proceeding,  he  should 
be  forced  to  go  and  get  a  weapon  himself.  ';  [The  occur 
rence]  shall  not  pass.  I  will  not  be  satisfied  here."  In 
the  end,  after  a  scene  of  anger  and  after  Benton  had  re 
peatedly  charged  Foote  with  intending  to  assassinate 
him  "  under  the  villainous  pretext  that  I  was  armed — the 
pretext  of  every  assassin  who  undertakes  to  constitute  a 
case  of  self-defense  when  laying  out  the  death  of  his  vic 
tim,"  a  committee  of  seven  members  to  investigate  the 
disorder  was  appointed  by  the  Vice- President. 

After  two  members  were  excused,  this  committee  con 
sisted  of  Pearce  of  Maryland,  chairman,  Webster  of  Mas 
sachusetts.  Phelps  of  Vermont,  Rusk  of  Texas,  Bell  of 
Tennessee,  Shields  of  Illinois,  and  Soule  of  Louisiana. 


400       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

Benton  and  Foote  conducted  their  respective  cases  before 
the  committee  and  produced  quite  a  large  number  of 
witnesses.  Finally,  on  July  30,  a  unanimous  report  was 
presented  to  the  Senate,  in  which,  after  narrating  the 
facts,  the  committee  said, 

"  In  the  first  place,  they  report  to  the  Senate,  as  their  unanimous 
opinion,  that  Mr.  Foote  is  entirely  innocent  of  any  design  or  desire 
to  assassinate  Mr.  Benton.  But  they  are  bound  to  say,  that  at 
various  times  during  the  present  session,  Mr.  Foote,  without  any 
sufficient  provocation,  so  far  as  the  committee  are  informed,  in 
dulged  in  personalities  towards  Mr.  Benton  of  the  most  offensive 
and  insulting  character,  such  as  were  calculated  to  arouse  the 
fiercest  resentment  of  the  human  bosom.  These  were  suffered  by 
Mr.  Benton  for  a  long  time  with  great  forbearance. 

"  On  the  26th  of  March  last  they  were  renewed ;  and  on  this 
occasion  Mr.  Benton  manifested  his  resentment  with  much  violence. 
On  the  succeeding  day  he  recriminated,  in  language  equally  personal, 
disorderly,  and  abusive.  .  .  . 

"  The  committee  cannot  too  strongly  condemn  the  practice  of 
wearing  arms  in  the  Senate  Chamber. 

"  Ours  should  be  deliberations  of  peace,  patriotism,  and  wis 
dom  ;  uninterrupted  by  personalities,  uncontrolled  by  force,  unin- 
timidated  by  preparations  for  deadly  conflict.  Senators  should  rely 
for  defence  upon  the  Senate,  whose  high  duty  it  is  to  protect  its 
members  from  injury  or  insult,  and  whose  practice  should  furnish 
a  perfect  guarantee  of  such  protection.  .  .  . 

"  In  the  present  care,  under  all  the  circumstances,  the  committee 
forbear  to  recommend  any  action  to  the  Senate.  They  hope  thr.t 
the  strong  condemnation  of  the  personalities  which  led  to  threatened 
violence,  their  censure  of  the  attempt  by  a  member  to  avenge  him 
self  in  the  presence  of  the  Senate  and  of  the  practice  of  carrying 
arms  in  the  Senate  Chamber,  will  be  a  sufficient  rebuke  and  a  warn 
ing  not  unheeded  in  future." 

In  the  middle  of  June,  again,  Benton  and  Foote  were 
engaged  in  a  warm  conflict  but  observed  the  proprieties, 
when  Benton  opposed  and  stopped  a  purchase  of  books 
advocated  by  Foote  which  Benton  thought  a  mere  "  job"  : 
but  there  was  one  touch  more  of  the  personalities  very 
late  in  the  session.  On  September  16,  after  the  defeat  of 
the  Omnibus  Bill  and  the  passage  of  the  measures  sep- 


COMPROMISE    OF    1850  401 

arately,  Benton  boasted  that  he  had  said  from  the  start 
that  such  would  be  the  result,  and  added  that  no  Senator 
could  come  upon  the  floor  and  lay  down  a  plan  of  opera 
tions  not  to  be  departed  from.  The  remark  was  intended 
partly  for  Clay,  but  doubtless  also  for  Foote,  who  had 
been  the  chief  sponsor  of  uniting  all  the  measures,  and 
Foote  answered,  with  an  evident  reference  to  Benton's 
expected  defeat  in  Missouri,  "  I  should  be  the  last  man  in 
the  Senate,  I  hope,  to  incur  a  charge  of  being  either 
tyrannical  or  oppressive;  but  if  we  have  been  the  sub 
jects  of  tyranny,  if  a  domineering  course  has  been  at  one 
time  pursued  here,  and  if  we  have  borne  it  with  patience 
for  years,  yes,  sir,  for  almost  thirty  years  entire,  thank 
God !  we  may  exclaim  at  last,  '  Behold  the  tyrant  prostrate 
in  the  dust,  and  Rome  again  is  free.'  "  * 

*  The  following  are  the  pages  in  the  Debates  at  which  the  im 
portant  details  of  the  Foote-Benton  conflict  will  be  found:  C.  G., 
3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  168,  355,  366,  602-604,  609*  610,  631,  632,  762, 
etc.,  769,  1153, 1154, 1479,  1480,  1829.  Mr.  Rhodes,  in  his  History  of  the 
United  States  (i.,  p.  169),  says  that  Senator  Bradbury  expressed  to 
him  the  opinion  that  Foote  had  been  tacitly  selected  by  the  Southern 
leaders  to  taunt  Benton,  and  some  parts  of  the  debates  give  color 
to  this  view.  Of  course,  however,  any  such  selection  must  have  been 
loosely  made  by  a  few  members.  The  South  would  never  have 
permitted  the  finding  of  such  a  report  as  that  of  the  committee  of 
investigation  if  Foote  had  been  egged  on  by  many  of  the  leading 
men.  In  the  hearing  before  the  committee  of  investigation,  Ben- 
ton  had  the  reporter  bring  in  his  original  notes,  showing  the  sup 
pressed  portion  of  Foote's  speech  which  I  have  quoted,  and  he 
showed,  too,  that  Foote  had  cut  it  out.  31  st  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  Senate 
Committee  Reports,  No.  170,  pp.  122,  123.  For  Foote's  antecedents, 
see  J.  Fairfax  McLaughlin's  Matthew  Lyon,  p.  302;  Oliver  Dyer's 
Great  Senators  of  the  United  States  Forty  Years  Ago,  pp.  139,  140; 
Schouler's  United  States,  v.,  p.  172;  Foote's  War  of  the  Rebellion, 
pp.  no,  in  ;  C.  G.,  3 ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  610.  Many  accounts  of  the 
contest  have  been  published,  but  of  these  I  have  only  used  (the  text 
sufficiently  indicating  where)  that  contained  in  Wentworth's  Reminis 
cences,  p.  48 ;  I  have  also  used  a  letter  to  me  from  the  late  ex-Senator 
Bradbury.  Both  writers  were  present  at  the  principal  outbreak. 


CHAPTER      XXI 

BENTON'S   LAST   SESSION   IN    THE   SENATE — ENORMOUS 
POWER  LONG  WIELDED  BY  HIM  IN  MISSOURI THE 

JACKSON-NAPTON    RESOLUTIONS APPEAL    CAMPAIGN 

AND     DEFEAT BILLS      FOR     A     TRANSCONTINENTAL 

RAILROAD — "THERE  is  THE  EAST,  THERE  is  INDIA" 

THERE  remained  now  but  one  more  session  for  Benton 
to  serve  in  the  United  States  Senate — the  second  or  short 
session  of  the  Thirty-first  Congress.  Attention  has  been 
already  called  to  his  gradual  separation  from  his  party, 
and  one  more  evidence  of  the  same  fact  must  be  men 
tioned.  Upon  the  death  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  on  Feb 
ruary  23,  1848,  Benton  was  selected  to  second  the  usual 
motion  upon  such  occasions  in  the  Senate.  There  can,  I 
think,  be  little  doubt  that  a  few  years  earlier  he  would 
neither  have  been  asked  nor  would  he  have  consented 
to  do  this,  but  he  records  in  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View" 
that  when  he  was  sitting  in  his  library  one  dull  evening 
and  a  letter  was  handed  him  from  Webster  informing  him 
of  Adams's  death  and  that  the  Massachusetts  delegation 
had  selected  him  for  the  purpose,  he  was  taken  by  sur 
prise,  and  there  came  over  him  a  feeling  of  inability  and 
unworthiness.  He  even  made  inquiries  whether  some  one 
else  could  not  act  instead,  but  found  this  impossible,  and 
he  then  in  a  few  days  made  a  short  speech  highly  appre 
ciative  of  the  long  career  of  the  distinguished  dead,  which 
cannot  but  have  been  most  distasteful  to  Southern  mem 
bers  who  looked  upon  Adams  as  one  of  their  bitterest 
enemies. 

The  separation  from  his  political  friends  of  the  past 
had  been  steadily  growing  until  now  at  his  last  session  he 
evidently  stood  very  much  alone,  and  was  even  given  no 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  403 

committee  position  but  an  inferior  one  on  the  Committee 
of  Finance,  but  he  none  the  less  introduced  and  pressed 
several  measures  of  his  own,  most  of  which  he  had  in 
some  form  urged  in  past  years  and  some  of  which  have 
since  found  their  way  on  to  the  statute-book.  Among 
them  may  be  mentioned  a  bill  to  build  an  armory  in  the 
West ;  one  to  transfer  the  Coast  Survey  from  the  Treas 
ury  to  the  Navy  Department;  one  to  make  the  acquisi 
tion  of  land  to  settlers  easy,  in  the  line  of  the  policy  he  had 
ever  pursued ;  one  for  a  railroad  and  great  national  high 
way  to  the  Pacific;  and  one  to  settle  land  titles  in  Cali 
fornia,  to  protect  Spanish  grants,  and  to  prevent  appeals 
in  such  cases  from  going  to  Washington.  In  the  dis 
cussion  of  this  California  bill  it  became  evident  that  he 
had  made  a  careful  study  of  the  Spanish  system  of  grant 
ing  lands  there,  which,  he  said,  was  quite  different  from 
that  prevailing  anywhere  else.  He  also  opposed  strongly 
a  bill  to  extend  Revolutionary  pensions  to  the  widows  of 
those  who  had  married  after  the  Revolution. 

The  last  speech  Benton  ever  made  in  the  Senate,  so  far 
as  the  "  Globe"  shows,  was  on  February  14,  1851,  upon 
a  bill  he  asked  leave  to  introduce  and  which  concerned 
in  part  a  policy  he  was  at  this  time  strongly  urging, 
the  building  of  a  railroad  to  the  Pacific  Coast.  Ap 
parently,  his  earlier  bill  of  the  session  upon  this  subject 
had  been  in  some  way  smothered,  and  he  took  this  some 
what  irregular  means  of  securing  the  right  to  speak  upon 
the  subject.  This  was  a  mode  he  had  adopted  in  any 
number  of  cases  in  the  past,  but  in  this  instance  objec 
tion  was  raised  by  Foote  and  others,  and  he  only  suc 
ceeded  in  making  his  speech  after  a  long  wrangle.  He 
was  in  the  Senate  and  voting  on  February  19  and  20,  but 
after  that  date  the  "  Globe"  does  not  show  his  presence. 
It  was  during  the  course  of  this  session  that  Henry  S. 
Geyer  was  at  length  (January  22,  1851)  elected  by  the 
Missouri  Legislature  to  succeed  him  as  Senator. 


404       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

It  will  be  well  now  to  go  back  some  years  and  try  to 
find  out  the  sources  of  the  immense  power  Benton  had 
held  so  long,  and  how  it  came  to  be  broken  in  the  end.  In 
the  first  place,  it  must  be  said  that  Missouri  had  for  years 
been  so  overwhelmingly  Democratic  that  John  F.  Darby 
writes  that,  when  he  was  in  1850  elected  a  member  of  the 
United  States  House  of  Representatives,  he  was  the  first 
Whig  to  be  elected  in  the  State  for  twenty-five  years. 

The  immense  power  resulting  from  this  state  of  af 
fairs  was  largely  wielded  by  Benton,  who  is  said  on  all 
hands  to  have  had  an  unexampled  hold  on  the  people  of 
Missouri.  It  is  worthy  of  mention,  as  an  instance  of  his 
methods  and  of  his  boldness,  that  in  1836  he  moved  in 
the  Senate  to  strike  Missouri's  name  out  of  the  distribu 
tion  bill  then  pending,  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  three 
years  earlier — as  he  said  in  the  Senate  on  January  24, 
1833 — opposition  to  the  then  distribution  schemes  had 
been  used  against  him  in  his  recent  election  and  "  it  had 
been  carefully  spread  in  all  directions  that  he  had  deprived 
her  [Missouri]  of  a  gift  of  five  hundred  thousand  acres 
of  land,  and  two  large  dividends  of  money." 

Senator  Elkins  has  said,  "  No  man  ever  dominated  a 
political  party  more  than  Mr.  Benton  did  the  Democratic 
party  of  the  State  of  Missouri  from  1820  to  1850.  His 
hold  was  so  great  on  the  Democrats  of  that  State  during 
this  period  that  he  hardly  asked  to  be  re-elected  to  his 
high  office — his  party  thrust  his  election  upon  him.  Once 
in  two  or  three  years  he  made  what  might  be  called  Ben- 
ton's  triumphal  progress  through  the  State,  and  told  the 
multitudes  who  came  out  to  greet  him  and  hear  him  speak 
what  '  I,  THOMAS  H.  BENTON,'  had  done  as  their  public 
servant  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  for  the  State 
of  Missouri  and  the  whole  country."  And  on  this  same 
point  it  may  be  added  that  in  October,  1844,  in  a  private 
letter  to  a  friend  he  wrote  of  his  coming  election  as  being 
absolutely  certain,  though  an  intrigue  against  him  had 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  405 

been  attempted,  and  described  it  as  "  an  event  about  which 
you  will  see  in  a  little  speech  at  Hannibal  I  take  no  con 
cern  and  leave  it  to  the  Hands." 

This  was  doubtless  largely  exaggeration,  or  else  he 
felt  by  that  time  that  the  dangers  to  his  election  had  been 
overcome,  but  it  seems  clear  that  his  methods  of  securing 
his  power  were  not  at  all  based  on  that  building  up  of  a 
machine,  which  constitutes  politics  in  the  minds  of  many. 
He  largely  appealed  to  his  people  from  a  higher  plane  and 
was  in  the  habit  of  circulating  his  speeches  on  great  ques 
tions  of  policy — quite  as  well  as  those  of  a  more  partisan 
character — among  them  in  large  numbers.  John  Quincy 
Adams  *  reproaches  him  in  1825-26  with  printing  and 
circulating  a  large  edition  of  one  of  his  land-law  speeches, 
and  Benton's  colleague  Barton  made  the  same  charge. 

This  instance  was  beyond  question  one  of  seeking 
votes,  but  it  was  doing  so  in  a  proper  way,  and  again  it 
may  fairly  be  assumed  that  the  pamphlet  published  in 
Missouri  in  1844  and  containing  his  articles  of  1819  on 
the  India  trade  was  another  honorable  way  of  appealing 
to  the  voters.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  chief  element 
in  his  methods  was  to  convince  Missourians  that  he  was  a 
valuable  representative,  and  hosts  of  instances  could  be 
cited  where  he  faithfully  guarded  their  rights. 

He  was  in  the  habit  of  spending  the  summer  months 
in  St.  Louis,  and  must  then  have  met  many  prominent 
men  from  all  over  the  State ;  but  I  have  found  little  evi 
dence  of  his  travelling  much  throughout  Missouri.  Col 
onel  Switzler,  a  contemporary  and  political  opponent,  has 
written  me  that  Benton's  appeal  campaign  of  1849 
"  brought  him  face  to  face  for  the  first  time  with  the  peo 
ple  of  all  parts  of  the  State ;"  and  Bay,  who  knew  Benton 
well  in  his  latter  years,  writes  that  he  "  seldom  travelled 
except  in  going  to  and  returning  from  Washington."  I 

*  Diary,   vii.,  pp.   187,   188. 


4o6       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

have  only  come  across  one  instance  (in  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1839 — i.e.,  the  year  following  one  of  his  elec 
tions)  when  he  rode  some  eleven  hundred  miles  on  horse 
back  over  Missouri.  In  1837  he  visited  New  Orleans  and 
the  South  and  travelled  in  all  some  six  thousand  miles. 

But,  however  infrequent  his  visits  among  his  constitu 
ents  in  general  may  have  been,  they  knew  his  course  very 
well  and  took  care  to  return  him  always.  Bay  writes  that 
"  it  was  well  known  that  near  the  expiration  of  his  sena 
torial  term,  no  Democratic  candidate  for  the  legislature 
could  be  elected  without  a  pledge  to  vote  for  his  re-election. 
This  pledge  was  exacted  upon  all  occasions,  and  a  refusal 
to  give  it  was  death  to  the  aspirant  for  legislative  honors." 

The  ultimate  reasons  for  all  this  are  not  easy  to  detail 
at  length,  but  Mr.  Lloyd  is  doubtless  right  when  he  says 
that  Benton  was  "  the  very  impersonation  of  the  genius 
of  the  West,  [and]  .  .  .  knew  better  than  any  one  who 
preceded  him  its  needs,  its  capabilities,  and  its  destinies." 
Bay,  too,  who  lived  in  public  life  during  Benton's  latter 
years,  writes  that  "  his  popularity  proceeded  from  his  zeal 
and  activity  in  originating  and  carrying  measures  calcu 
lated  to  promote  the  welfare  and  interests  of  the  immi 
grant  and  settler."  It  was,  moreover,  doubtless  gratify 
ing  to  the  people  of  what  was  then  a  border  State  to  have 
a  Senator  of  so  much  importance,  and  Benton  was  beyond 
question  an  admirable  representative.  The  interests  of 
his  State  were  always  sedulously  watched  by  him,  and  but 
few  members  of  any  legislative  body  have  existed  more 
likely  to  succeed  in  carrying  a  measure. 

One  striking  instance  in  point  may  be  cited  of  a  matter 
of  vast  interest  to  the  Missourians  in  1836,  what  is 
known  in  their  history  as  the  Platte  purchase.  At  that 
time,  in  the  northwestern  corner  of  the  State,  their  west 
ern  line  was  an  astronomical  one,  running  north  and 
south,  far  to  the  east  of  the  Missouri  River.  They  were 
desirous  of  extending  westward,  so  as  to  make  that  river 


LAST   SESSION    IN    SENATE  407 

their  boundary-line  in  this  quarter,  but  there  was  the  very 
serious  difficulty  to  be  encountered  in  Congress  of  se 
curing  the  removal  of  the  Indians,  and  further  that  the  ex 
tension  violated  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  by  making 
slave  territory  of  a  large  area  north  of  the  line  of  36°  30'. 
Yet  Benton  and  Linn  secured  necessary  legislation  from 
Congress,  apparently  without  great  difficulty.  Men  who 
can  accomplish  results  of  this  kind  are  not  soon  cast  aside. 

So  far  as  the  records  show,  he  had  little  or  no  trouble 
to  be  re-elected  until  his  defeat  in  1851,  and  he  received 
on  most  occasions  twice  as  many  votes  as  his  opponents 
or  even  more.  He  thought  the  Bank  of  the  United  States 
tried  to  defeat  him  in  1832,  but  in  the  actual  vote  that 
year  he  received  forty-six  votes  to  twelve  for  his  com 
petitor.  There  were,  however,  now  and  then  ambitious 
leaders  who  tried  to  unhorse  him,  and  in  a  private  letter 
of  1849  ne  wrote  to  a  friend,  with  a  Bentonian  touch  of 
arrogance,  that  "  when  Strother  disclosed  his  plan 
(moved  from  Calhoun)  to  overthrow  me  near  twenty 
years  ago,  to  Billy  Kinney,*  Kinney  told  him  that  he  had 
seen  many  persons  attack  Benton,  and  he  had  seen  them 
all  fall  dead  at  his  feet.  That  was  his  fate.  We  will  see 
what  will  be  the  fate  of  the  present  assailants."  And  some 
years  earlier,  in  1843,  ne  wrote  a  friend  "  many  have  at 
tempted  [to  put  me  down]  in  the  last  twenty-five  years, 
without  much  success.  It  will  be  seen  whether  this  at 
tempt  will  be  more  successful." 

About  the  time  of  this  last  letter,  he  and  others  were 
engaged  in  founding  the  Missourian,  because  of  dissatis 
faction  with  the  course  of  The  Reporter,  which  had  been 
unsound  on  currency  questions  and  had  moreover  in  1842 
published  "  two  or  three  columns  against  the  dictator" — 
of  course  meaning  Benton, — though  it  had  in  his  opinion 
not  dared  to  attack  him  openly.  It  was  at  this  time  that 

*  The  name  is  difficult  to  decipher. 


408       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

his  course  as  to  Texas,  and  soon  as  to  Oregon,  too,  was 
beginning  to  tell  against  him,  and  his  election  in  1844  was 
by  no  means  a  foregone  conclusion.  Indeed,  it  was  prob 
ably  a  very  hard  contest,  and  Buchanan,  a  capable  judge, 
evidently  feared  in  1844  that  the  hue  and  cry  against  him 
might  result  in  his  overthrow.  There  were  two  Senators 
to  be  elected,  owing  to  Linn's  death,  and  two  Democrats 
were  chosen,  but  Atchison  had  one  hundred  and  one  votes, 
while  Benton  received  but  seventy-four. 

In  the  years  following  this  election  the  opposition  to 
him  steadily  increased.  His  course  as  to  the  question  of 
slavery  in  the  new  territories  did  not  suit  the  constituency 
of  a  slave  State,  the  people  of  which  were  then  tending 
more  and  more  to  take  their  position  side  by  side  with  the 
South  in  the  alignment  for  a  great  struggle;  while  he 
would  not  budge  an  inch  from  his  course  and  looked 
upon  the  Democratic  party  as  passing  into  the  con 
trol  of  the  "  nullifiers  and  disunionists."  "  Accidents  and 
events,"  he  wrote  some  years  later  in  his  pamphlet  on  the 
Dred  Scott  case,  "  have  given  this  party  a  strange  pre 
eminence.  Under  Jackson's  administration  proclaimed 
for  treason ;  since  at  the  head  of  the  government  and  the 
Democratic  party.  The  death  of  Harrison  and  the  acces 
sion  of  Tyler  was  their  first  great  lift;  the  election  of 
Mr.  Pierce  was  their  culminating  point;"  and  again  he 
wrote  of  the  "  Democratic  party  now  headed  by  nullifiers 
and  gorged  with  renegades." 

To  this  cause  must  be  added  that  Benton  made  many 
enemies  where  a  cooler  head  would  have  done  otherwise. 
Probably  he  could  not  understand  honest  opposition  to 
his  views,  and  he  certainly  would  not  brook  it,  and  in 
many  instances  by  his  overbearing  roughness  he  made 
enemies  of  those  who  had  been  his  friends  for  years.  So 
overbearing  was  he,  so  impatient  of  even  question,  so 
convinced  that  it  was  for  him  to  rule  and  others  to  obey 
implicitly,  that  Hon.  J.  IT.  Birch,  whose  father  saw  the 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  409 

whole  struggle  and  had  been  a  friend  but  became  a  bitter 
enemy,  sums  up  the  contest  which  resulted  in  Benton's 
defeat  by  saying  that  "  he  forced  his  enemies  to  conspire 
to  kill  him,  that  they  might  live." 

The  opinion  has  already  been  expressed  that  the  Mis 
souri  resolutions,  which  were  presented  by  Benton  in  the 
Senate  on  January  20,  1845,  uPon  the  subject  of  Texas, 
were  possibly  not  drawn  exactly  as  he  would  have  wished, 
but  he  was  able  to  obey  them.  Two  years  later  (Febru 
ary  15,  1847)  resolutions*  were  passed  by  the  General 
Assembly  of  Missouri,  which,  it  may  probably  be  as 
sumed,  he  had  suggested.  These  insisted  upon  the  strict 
maintenance  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  and  in  par 
ticular  of  the  eighth  section  thereof,  \vhich  prohibited 
slavery  in  the  remaining  federal  territory,  north  of  the 
line  of  36°  30';  and  instructed  the  Senators  to  vote  ac 
cordingly.  But  far  different  was  the  case  with  the  reso 
lutions  upon  the  general  subject  of  slavery,  which  were 
adopted  by  the  General  Assembly  on  March  10,  1849,  and 
which  are  known  as  "  the  Jackson-Napton  Resolutions."  f 

*  These  resolutions  do  not  seem  to  have  been  presented  in  the 
Senate,  but  are  quoted  by  Benton  in  his  Jefferson  City  speech  and 
are  to  be  found  in  the  volume  of  statutes  at  large  of  Missouri. 

f  MISSOURI   RESOLUTIONS    ON    SLAVERY 

Read  in  Senate,  Thursday,  January  3,  1850  (C.  G.,  3ist  Cong., 
ist  Sess.,  pp.  97,  98). 

"Resolved,  by  the  General  Assembly  of  the  State  of  Missouri, 
ist.  That  the  Federal  Constitution  was  the  result  of  a  compromise 
between  the  conflicting  interests  of  the  States  which  formed  it,  and 
in  no  part  of  that  instrument  is  to  be  found  any  delegation  of 
power  to  Congress  to  legislate  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  excepting 
some  special  provisions  having  in  view  the  prospective  abolition  of 
the  African  slave  trade  and  for  the  recovery  of  fugitive  slaves.  Any 
attempt,  therefore,  on  the  part  of  Congress  to  legislate  on  the 
subject  so  as  to  affect  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States,  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  or  in  the  Territories,  is,  to  say  the  least,  a 
violation  of  the  principle  upon  which  that  instrument  was  founded. 

"2d.  That  the  territories  acquired  by  the  blood  and  treasure  of 


410       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

These  were  the  culmination  of  the  gathering  storm 
against  him,  are  supposed  to  have  been  drawn  by  Judge 
William  B.  Napton,  and  were  doubtless  designedly  so 
formulated  as  to  embarass  Benton.  Denying  in  words 
what  he  was  well  known  to  maintain, — the  power  of  Con 
gress  to  forbid  slavery  in  any  territory, — they  promised 
hearty  co-operation  with  the  other  slave  States  in  meas 
ures  for  protection  against  Northern  fanaticism,  and  then 


the  whole  nation  ought  to  be  governed  for  the  common  benefit  of  the 
citizens  of  all  the  States;  and  any  organization  of  the  territorial 
governments  excluding  the  citizens  of  any  part  of  the  Union  from 
removing  to  such  territories  with  their  property  would  be  an  exercise 
of  power  by  Congress  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  upon  which  our 
federal  compact  was  based,  insulting  to  the  sovereignty  and  dignity 
of  the  States  thus  affected,  calculated  to  alienate  one  portion  of  the 
Union  from  another,  and  tending  ultimately  to  disunion. 

"  3d.  That  this  General  Assembly  regard  the  conduct  of  the 
Northern  States  on  the  subject  of  slavery  as  releasing  the  slave- 
holding  States  from  all  further  adherence  to  the  basis  of  com 
promise  fixed  on  by  the  act  of  Congress  of  the  6th  of  March,  1820, 
even  if  such  act  ever  did  impose  any  obligation  upon  the  slave- 
holding  States,  and  authorizes  them  to  insist  on  their  rights  under 
the  Constitution ;  but,  for  the  sake  of  harmony  and  for  the  preser 
vation  of  our  Federal  Union,  they  will  still  sanction  the  application 
of  the  principle  of  the  Missouri  compromise  to  the  recent  terri 
torial  acquisitions,  if  by  such  concession  future  aggression  upon 
the  equal  rights  of  the  States  may  be  arrested  and  the  spirit  of 
antislavery  fanaticism  be  extinguished. 

"  4th.  The  right  to  prohibit  slavery  in  any  territory  belongs  ex 
clusively  to  the  people  thereof,  and  can  only  be  exercised  by  them 
in  forming  their  constitution  for  a  State  government,  or  in  their 
sovereign  capacity  as  an  independent  State. 

"  5th.  That  in  the  event  of  the  passage  of  any  act  conflicting 
with  the  principles  herein  expressed,  Missouri  will  be  found  in 
hearty  co-operation  with  the  slave-holding  States  in  such  measures 
as  may  be  deemed  necessary  for  our  mutual  protection  against  the 
encroachments  of  Northern  fanaticism. 

"  6th.  That  our  Senators  in  Congress  be  instructed,  and  our 
Representatives  be  requested,  to  act  in  conformity  with  the  fore 
going  resolutions." 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  411 

capped  the  climax  by  instructing  the  Senators  to  act  in 
conformity  with  them. 

Benton  was  warned  by  Blair  in  the  end  of  January  of 
what  was  going  on,  and  replied,  "  I  have  not  written  a 
word  to  Missouri,  but  I  have  been  perfectly  aware  of  the 
plot  against  myself  and  friends.  It  was  all  directed  from 
this  place,  and  is  only  a  new  form  of  an  old  work.  .  .  . 
I  was  disappointed  in  not  being  able  to  get  out  [among 
his  enemies]  last  fall.  I  knew  what  was  intended  and 
that  my  presence  was  necessary,  but  I  was  engaged  to  the 
last  moment  in  closing  sales  of  estates  in  Kentucky  and 
Virginia."  He  seems  to  have  taken  no  hand  in  the  efforts 
made  by  his  friends  in  Missouri  to  defeat  the  resolutions, 
and  they  were  passed  on  March  10,  1849. 

When  these  resolutions  were  presented  by  Atchison 
in  the  Senate  at  the  next  session,  Benton  at  once  said  that 
they  did  not  represent  the  real  opinion  in  Missouri,  but 
long  before  this  he  had  declared  open  war  on  them.  He 
is  said  to  have  pronounced  at  once  upon  their  passage  in 
truly  Bentonian  diction  that  they  were  "  the  speckled  pro 
geny  of  a  vile  conjunction,"  and  redolent  with  lurking 
treason  to  the  Union :  and  on  May  9  he  was  in  St.  Louis 
and  published  a  letter  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  resolu 
tions  and  the  instructions  to  obey  them,  and  then  goes  on, 
"  From  this  command  I  appeal  to  the  people  of  Missouri, 
— the  whole  body  of  the  people, — and  if  they  confirm  the 
instructions,  I  shall  give  them  an  opportunity  to  find  a 
Senator  to  carry  their  wishes  into  effect,  as  I  cannot  do 
anything  to  dissolve  this  Union,  or  to  array  one-half  of  it 
against  the  other.  ...  It  is  a  question  above  party,  and 
goes  to  the  whole  people." 

There  then  began  a  campaign  which  Colonel  Switzler, 
w^ho  was  close  to  the  events  of  the  day,  writes  of  as  an 
extraordinary  one  "  resulting  in  an  upheaval  of  the  politi 
cal  forces  of  the  State  and  characterized  by  a  bitterness 
of  invective  and  popular  excitement  without  parallel  in 


4i2       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

the  history  of  Missouri."  Benton  first  spoke  on  May  26, 
at  Jefferson  City,  and  travelled  far  and  wide  over  the 
State.  His  opening  speech,  and  a  later  one  at  Fayette 
on  September  i,  have  been  preserved  and  seem  to  show 
that  his  object  was  to  have  the  resolutions  withdrawn  in 
some  way, — there  was  no  legislature  to  be  elected  at  this 
time, — while  his  enemies  united  against  him  in  what  he 
called  a  "  concerted  wolf-howl  of  '  obey  or  resign/  ' 

He  denounced  the  resolutions  as  "  false  in  their  facts, 
incendiary  in  their  temper,  disunion  in  their  object,  nulli 
fication  in  their  essence,  high  treason  in  their  remedy,  and 
usurpation  in  their  character,"  and  added — with  an  evi 
dent  reference  to  the  supposed  author  of  the  resolutions — 
that  if  any  man  in  Missouri  should  act  under  the  fourth 
and  fifth  resolutions,  "  he  will  be  subject  to  be  hung 
under  the  laws  of  the  United  States,  and  if  a  judge,  will 
deserve  to  be  hung."  He  maintained,  as  was  beyond 
question  in  the  main  true,  that  the  Missouri  resolutions 
were  but  a  copy  of  those  introduced  by  Calhoun  into  the 
Senate  on  February  19,  1847,  and  which  he  had  de 
nounced  as  firebrand,  and  insisted  that  the  whole  contest 
against  him  in  Missouri  was  instigated  by  Calhoun  and 
his  friends.  He  then  reviewed  at  great  length  and  with 
much  severity  Calhoun's  career,  especially  as  to  Nullifi 
cation,  and  what  he  called  Nullification  No.  2,  by  which 
he  meant  the  proceedings  at  the  Southern  meetings  of 
the  winter  of  1849,  resulting  in  the  Southern  Address, 
and  warned  his  hearers  against  "  the  nullification  sect — 
that  fungus  of  all  parties,  and  cancer  upon  the  Democratic 
party,  into  the  body  of  which  it  is  now  eating,  and  which 
it  will  destroy  if  not  cut  out." 

Insisting  that  there  was  real  danger  to  the  Union 
abroad  in  the  country,  he  reviewed  at  some  length  the 
proceedings  at  the  Southern  meetings,  quoting  also  many 
Southern  disunion  toasts  of  the  recent  Fourth  of  July, 
and  maintained  that  there  was  no  real  reason  for  this,  and 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  413 

that  the  North  had  been  entirely  fair  to  the  South  and 
had  no  design  to  interfere  with  slavery.  How,  but  by  the 
aid  of  Northern  votes,  he  asked,  are  we  to  get  the  legis 
lation  for  the  transcontinental  railroad — "the  prayer  of 
every  good  man  in  Missouri" — to  unite  San  Francisco, 
St.  Louis,  and  the  East? 

Fayette  was  looked  upon  by  him  as  the  hot-bed  of  his 
enemies,  so  he  began  his  speech  there  by  saying  with  ex 
traordinary  emphasis  on  the  last  twro  words,  "  My  friends 
— and  in  that  term  I  comprehend  those  who  come  to  hear 
the  truth  and  to  believe  it — none  others,3'  and  a  foot-note 
tells  us  that  it  was  notorious  that  a  body  of  armed  men 
were  in  the  house,  insulting  him  for  the  first  quarter  of 
an  hour.  To  these  he  referred  as  carrying  knives  for  his 
benefit  "  and  revolvers  prepared  to  give  me  six,  out  of 
the  half  dozen,  bullets  they  contain." 

And  in  his  opening  speech  at  Jefferson  City,  in  the 
slave  State  of  Missouri,  at  a  time  when  the  public  pulse 
was  running  high  on  this  particular  subject,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  announce  himself  as  at  heart  an  opponent  of 
slavery  and  opposed  to  extending  it  to  any  region  where 
it  did  not  already  exist.  Making  what  he  called  a  "  per 
sonal  exposition"  of  his  views,  he  detailed  his  actions 
upon  the  subject  and  his  opinions  since  reading  Tucker's 
"  Blackstone"  as  a  law-student,  and  showed  as  clearly  as 
was  possible  that  he  was  to  be  counted  upon  as  sure  to 
oppose  generally  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  new 
territories.  "As  there  is  none  in  New  Mexico  or  Cali 
fornia  [referring  to  slavery]  I  am  against  sending  it  to 
those  territories,  and  could  not  vote  for  such  a  measure." 

If,  as  is  probably  the  case,  Ben  ton  had  hoped  to  be  able 
to  have  the  Jackson-Napton  resolutions  recalled  at  a  spe 
cial  session  of  the  legislature  in  the  fall  of  1849,  ne  must 
have  felt  compelled  to  abandon  this  purpose  after  the  elec 
tion  ;  indeed,  on  September  25,  Foote  wrote  Calhoun  that 
he  had  information  from  all  parts  of  Missouri  assuring 


4i4       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

him  of  Benton's  certain  defeat.     The  resolutions  were 
presented  in  the  Senate  by  Atchison  on  January  3,  1850. 

In  the  following  summer  (August,  1850)  the  legisla 
ture  was  elected  which  was  to  choose  Benton's  successor. 
It  met  in  regular  session  in  November,  and  in  January 
( 1851 )  proceeded  to  choose  a  Senator.  There  was  a  bit 
ter  struggle,  but  on  January  22,  1851,  after  twelve  days, 
Henry  S.  Geyer,  a  prominent  Whig  lawyer  of  St.  Louis, 
who  was  later  one  of  the  counsel  for  Dred  Scott,  was 
chosen  on  the  fortieth  ballot.  His  election  was  brought 
about  by  some  Democrats,  both  supporters  and  opponents 
of  Benton,  giving  way  and  uniting  with  the  Whigs. 
Geyer  had  eighty  votes  and  Benton  fifty-five,  while  other 
candidates  received  twenty-two. 

But  the  contest  was  by  no  means  over  and  for  years 
the  State  was  torn  with  bitter  feuds,  and  the  two  divi 
sions  of  the  Democrats  came  to  be  known  as  "  Benton" 
and  "  anti-Benton."  Originally,  it  seems  they  were  called 
"  Test"  and  "  anti-Test,"  according  as  they  would  or 
would  not  admit  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Jackson-Napton 
resolutions,  while  the  names  "  Hards"  and  "  Softs"- 
having  reference  to  the  sort  of  currency  they  were  sup 
posed  to  believe  in — were  also  used.  For  some  years,  a 
large  part  of  the  time  of  the  legislature  was  taken  up  with 
these  quarrels,  and  but  little  actual  work  could  be  accom 
plished,  while  Benton's  friends  made  determined  but  vain 
efforts  to  expunge  the  resolutions  from  the  journals.  In 
1855,  when  Atchison  came  up  for  re-election,  the  vote  was 
divided  between  him,  Benton,  and  Doniphan,  in  the  pro 
portions  respectively  of  about  fifty-six,  forty,  and  fifty- 
nine  votes ;  but  there  was  no  election,  and  that  legislature 
was  unable  at  any  time  to  make  a  choice. 

Finally,  the  next  assembly,  in  1856-57,  dropped  Atch 
ison  and  elected  Green  (anti-Benton)  in  his  place  and 
filled  the  place  of  Geyer  (who  had  died)  with  Trusten 
Polk  (anti-Benton).  This  was  shortly  after  Benton's  de- 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  415 

feat  in  his  campaign  for  the  governorship,  and  may  be 
regarded  as  his  last  political  struggle;  he  received  but 
thirty-three  votes  against  Green's  eighty-nine,  and 
twenty-three  against  Folk's  one  hundred  and  one.* 

The  bill  for  a  transcontinental  railroad,  which  it  has 
been  shown  that  Benton  introduced  and  urged  at  this  his 
last  session  in  the  Senate,  was  not  the  first  instance  of  his 
interest  in  steam-transportation  by  land.  But  he  had, 
at  the  same  time,  by  no  means  taken  kindly  to  the  new 
method  at  first,  and  it  was  probably  a  long  series  of  years 
before  he  became  reconciled.  He  had  indeed  passed  the 
plastic  age,  when  railroads  came  to  be  adopted,  and  all 
his  thoughts  were  fixed  in  grooves  which  assumed  water 
transportation  as  the  only  means  for  the  transfer  of 
freight  of  great  bulk. 

His  youth  and  early  manhood  had  seen  the  commer 
cial  relations  of  his  section  almost  entirely  governed  by 
the  great  water-courses,  and  all  his  and  his  people's  inter 
ests  and  affections  were  bound  up  with  the  region  to  the 
south  of  them  to  which  their  great  rivers  led.  Even  the 
route  by  the  Ohio  and  then  to  the  seaboard  across  the 
Alleghenies  presented  almost  insuperable  barriers  to  the 

*  For  the  general  history  of  events  in  Missouri  during  Benton's 
time,  I  have  relied  on  Colonel  Switzler's  History  of  Missouri,  p.  265, 
etc.;  Davis  and  Durrie's  Missouri,  pp.  92,  104,  138,  141;  and  Lucien 
Carr's  Missouri,  p.  227.  Colonel  Switzler  has  also  written  me 
reminiscences  of  Benton.  Senator  Elkins's  speech  is  in  Benton 
Statue  Proceedings,  pp.  135-139-  Mr.  Lloyd's  in  ibid.,  p.  57;  and 
J.  H.  Birch's,  in  ibid.,  p.  13.  W.  V.  N.  Bay's  account  of  Benton  is 
in  his  Bench  and  Bar,  p.  7,  etc.  Benton's  letter  of  appeal  from  the 
Missouri  Resolutions  is  in  Niles's  Register  (May  23,  1844),  vol. 
Ixxv.,  p.  332,  and  see  ibid,  for  June  20,  1849,  pp.  390,  397,  for  a  synop 
sis  of  Benton's  speech  at  Jefferson  City.  His  journey  of  1836  is 
referred  to  by  him  in  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  43,  and  that  of 
1839  in  Niles's  Register  (November  23,  1839),  vol.  Ivii.,  p.  207,  and 
in  a  private  letter.  For  Benton's  account  of  the  Platte  purchase  see 
View,  i.,  pp.  626,  627.  For  Foote's  letter  to  Calhoun,  see  Calhoun's 
Correspondence,  p.  1204. 


416        LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

transfer  of  heavy  articles,  and  Benton  for  many  years  ad 
hered  to  the  conclusions  of  his  earlier  life  that  the  natural 
and  necessary  relation  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  with 
the  South.  And,  as  public  men  are  always  strictly  held  to 
the  alleged  virtues  of  consistency,  he  was  ridiculed  in  his 
latter  years  for  being  an  earnest  advocate  of  a  system 
which  he  had  by  no  means  always  been  friendly  to.  Few 
men  past  early  youth  accept  readily  such  stupendous 
changes,  and  in  this  case  there  was  the  additional  element 
that  the  result  would  undoubtedly  be  to  unhinge  the  past 
and  bring  about  a  closer  relationship  with  the  East  and 
New  England,  which  Benton  disliked  and  distrusted. 

Probably,  his  early  feeling  is  well  shown  by  what  he 
said  in  1830  during  the  debate  on  Foot's  resolution: 

"  As  to  the  idea,"  he  said,  "  of  sending  the  products  of  the  West 
across  the  Alleghenies,  it  is  the  conception  of  insanity  itself!  No 
railroad  or  canal  will  ever  carry  them,  not  even  if  they  do  it  gratis. 
One  transshipment  [or  "  carry"],  and  there  would  have  to  be  several, 
would  exceed  the  expense  of  transportation  to  New  Orleans,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  up-stream  work  of  getting  to  the  canal  or  railway. 
.  .  .  No,  sir,  the  West  is  not  going  to  give  up  their  steamboats — 
their  ships,  not  of  the  desert,  but  of  noble  rivers.  They  are  not 
going  to  abandon  the  Mississippi,  mare  nostrum — our  sea — for  the 
comfort  of  scaling  the  Allegheny  Mountains  with  hogsheads  of 
tobacco,  barrels  of  whiskey,  pork,  and  flour,  bales  of  hemp,  and 
coops  of  chickens  and  turkeys  on  their  backs." 

But  in  no  long  course  of  years  his  mind  had  entirely 
abandoned  any  such  ideas  as  these  and  had  pretty  well 
grasped  the  enormous  effect  to  be  worked  by  the  new 
agency.  It  is  probable  that  his  change  of  view  was 
largely  brought  about  by  his  interest  in  Oregon  and  the 
far  West;  but,  in  addition  to  this,  some  of  the  great 
schemers  of  the  day  as  to  railroads  were  visitors  at  his 
house,  among  whom  may  be  mentioned  "  Central- Amer 
ica  Stephens,"  the  traveller  and  persistent  advocate  of  the 
Panama  Railroad.  Benton  had  also  in  his  younger  days 
looked  upon  the  Rocky  Mountains  as  our  "  everlasting 


LAST    SESSION    IN    SENATE  417 

boundary.  Along  the  back  of  this  ridge,"  he  had  said  in 
an  Oregon  debate  in  1825,  "  the  western  limit  of  this 
republic  should  be  drawn,  and  the  statue  of  the  fabled 
god  Terminus  should  be  raised  upon  its  highest  peak, 
never  to  be  thrown  down,"  but  this  belief  also  was  left 
behind  within  two  decades,  as  railroads  spread  and  grew. 

That  he  was  mistaken  in  these  beliefs  of  his  earlier 
years  does  not  need  to  be  said,  but  conditions  had  so 
changed  that  the  problem  was  utterly  different,  and  it  is 
to  the  credit  of  his  capacity  as  a  statesman  that  he  was 
able  so  to  change  and  grow  after  middle  life.  At  no  time 
is  he  to  be  found  indulging  in  such  mere  folly  as  was  ex 
hibited  by  Josiah  Quincy  at  the  time  of  the  Louisiana  pur 
chase  or  by  McDuffie  as  to  Oregon.  The  former  has  been 
already  quoted,  and  the  latter  thought  in  1843  tnat  Ore 
gon  was  only  fit  for  a  Botany  Bay  settlement,  and  said 
"  for  agricultural  purposes  I  would  not  .  .  .  give  a  pinch 
of  snuff  for  the  whole  territory.  I  wish  to  God  we  did  not 
own  it." 

Far  different  was  the  case  with  Benton,  who  could 
grow  up  to  quite  new  conditions  and  even  openly  express 
his  admiration  for  the  favorable  results  flowing  from  a 
policy  he  had  opposed.  Thus,  in  1849,  though  he  had 
persistently  opposed  the  Mexican  War  and  our  consequent 
acquisition  of  territory,  yet  he  fully  appreciated  the  vastly 
important  results  flowing  to  us  therefrom,  and  said  on 
one  of  his  transcontinental  railroad  bills,  "  We  own  the 
country  from  sea  to  sea — from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
— and  upon  a  breadth  equal  to  the  length  of  the  Missis 
sippi — and  embracing  the  whole  temperate  zone.  Three 
thousand  miles  across,  and  half  that  breadth,  is  the  mag 
nificent  parallelogram  of  our  domain." 

I  do  not  know  when  Benton  first  began  to  see  rail 
roads  in  their  true  light,  but  by  1844  he  fully  appreciated 
the  stupendous  effect  they  were  destined  to  have  on  civ 
ilization,  and  in  October  of  that  year  said  in  St.  Louis : 

27 


418       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

"  I  say  the  man  is  alive,  full  grown,  and  is  listening  to  what  I 
say  (without  believing  it  perhaps)  who  will  yet  see  the  Asiatic 
commerce  traversing  the  North  Pacific  Ocean — entering  the  Oregon 
River— climbing  the  western  slope  of  the  Rocky  Mountains— issuing 
from  its  gorges— and  spreading  its  fertilizing  streams  over  our  wide- 
extended  Union!  The  steamboat  and  the  steam-car  have  not  ex 
hausted  all  their  wonders.  They  have  not  yet  even  found  their 
amplest  and  most  appropriate  theatres — the  tranquil  surface  of  the 
North  Pacific  Ocean,  and  the  vast  inclined  plains  which  spread  east 
and  west  from  the  base  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  The  magic  boat 
and  the  flying  car  are  not  yet  seen  upon  this  ocean  and  this  plain, 
but  they  will  be  seen  there;  and  St.  Louis  is  yet  to  find  herself  as 
near  to  Canton  as  she  now  is  to  London,  with  a  better  and  safer 
route,  by  land  and  sea,  to  China  and  Japan,  than  she  now  has  to 
France  and  Great  Britain." 

From  this  time  on  to  the  end  of  his  public  career  his 
interest  in  the  subject  never  flagged,  and  during  each  one 
of  his  last  three  sessions  in  the  Senate,  and  once  in  the 
House,  he  introduced  and  pressed  bills  for  a  transcon 
tinental  railroad.  He  fought  hotly  against  proposed 
land-grants  to  individuals  or  companies  for  the  purpose — • 
characterizing  a  committee  plan  of  the  kind  in  1846  as 
absurd,  ridiculous,  and  impudent — and  long  thought  the 
road  should  be  built  by  the  government  out  of  the  pro 
ceeds  of  land-sales  in  the  newly  acquired  territories  and 
its  use  then  be  leased  out. 

In  his  measure  of  December,  1850,  he  proposed  that 
a  strip  of  ground  one  hundred  miles  wide  from  San  Fran 
cisco  to  St.  Louis  with  branches  of  half  that  width  to 
Santa  Fe  and  to  Oregon,  should  be  set  aside  and  the  In 
dian  title  thereto  extinguished,  and  one  mile  in  width 
of  this  strip  was  to  be  reserved  for  the  road-beds.  The 
plan  included  an  ordinary  highway  (to  be  built  at  once) 
and  a  telegraphic  line,  as  well  as  a  railroad;  and  dona 
tions  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  were  to  be  made  to 
heads  of  families  settling  on  the  route.  He  took  much 
interest  at  about  this  time,  too,  in  some  experiments  mak 
ing  by  Dr.  Charles  G.  Page  as  to  the  practicability  of 


LAST   SESSION   IN   SENATE  419 

using  electro-magnetic  power  as  a  means  of  locomotion, 
and  moved  and  carried  an  appropriation  of  twenty  thou 
sand  dollars  to  aid  in  experiments,  and  in  1848-49  he 
advocated  the  use  of  the  proposed  Panama  Railroad  as 
a  temporary  means  of  getting  to  Oregon  and  supported 
the  policy  of  the  government  making  a  ten-year  contract 
with  it. 

But  in  his  latest  proposal  in  the  House  he  had  aban 
doned  all  idea  of  the  government's  building  the  road,  and 
seems  to  have  had  a  company  of  individuals  ready  to 
undertake  the  work,  to  whom  was  to  be  ceded  a  right  of 
way  one  mile  wide  on  either  side  of  the  railroad  and  "  no 
other  grant,  no  alternate  sections/'  He  expected  the 
road  to  be  built  by  way  of  St.  Louis  and  specified  in  De 
cember,  1850,  that  it  was  "  to  begin  and  to  end  between 
the  parallels  of  38°  and  39°  of  north  latitude,  and,  with 
slight  deflections,  to  follow  these  latitudes  from  the  Mis 
sissippi  to  the  Pacific."  The  great  width  of  a  mile  which 
he  provided  for  the  right  of  way  became  a  subject  of  ridi 
cule  with  his  opponents,  while  he  explained  that  his  pur 
pose  was  to  provide  for  the  future  by  leaving  ample  space 
for  other  roads  and  other  possible  methods  of  travel. 

Doubtless,  his  plans  were  influenced  by  local  pride  and 
the  desire  to  advance  the  interests  of  his  own  section,  and 
possibly  this  led  in  part  to  his  violent  opposition  to  the 
Asa  Whitney  plans  of  1846  and  1848  for  an  enormous 
land-grant  to  enable  him  to  build  a  railroad  from  Lake 
Michigan  to  the  Pacific.  Benton  always  spoke  of  the 
line  he  himself  advocated  as  "  a  great  central  national 
highway/'  and  in  a  letter  of  November  14,  1853,  to  the 
citizens  of  Missouri,  he  wrote  that  "  a  sectional  road, 
partly  through  Mexico,  and  over  a  country  in  which  Kit 
Carson  says  a  wolf  could  not  make  his  living,  seems  to 
have  become  the  fixed  determination  of  the  South,"  and 
he  later  maintained  in  his  pamphlet  on  the  Dred  Scott 
Case  that  their  object  in  this  was  that,  in  the  event  of  a 


420       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

separation  of  the  States,  the  railroad  should  be  within 
the  limits  of  "  the  United  States  South."  It  has  been 
charged  that  his  interest  in  the  subject  ended  when  it  was 
learned  that  the  best  route  did  not  lead  to  St.  Louis,  but 
he  never  ceased  working  at  it  while  in  public  position. 

During  his  service  in  the  House,  he  had  visited  New 
England  and  other  parts  of  the  East  in  order  to  interest 
capitalists  in  the  subject,  and  delivered  a  number  of  lec 
tures.  In  Boston,  he  said,  "  For  this  purpose  I  come  here, 
and  go  elsewhere,  at  much  inconvenience  to  myself  and 
great  cost  of  personal  feeling — oppressed  as  I  am  with 
occupation,  and  saddened  with  the  weight  of  recent  and 
heavy  affliction  [the  death  of  his  wife].  But  for  this 
cause,  I  could  become  (if  circumstances  permitted)  a 
Peter  the  Hermit,  traversing  the  country  and  preaching 
a  crusade, — not  of  arms  against  the  infidel, — but  of  work 
upon  an  enterprise  beneficial  to  the  human  race."  This 
was  at  about  the  time  when  he  introduced  his  last  bill  upon 
the  subject  into  the  House  during  the  session  of  1854-55, 
which  he  urged  with  all  his  power  and  in  the  discussion  of 
which  he  showed  a  wonderfully  complete  knowledge  for 
the  day  of  the  immense  unsettled  region  to  be  traversed. 

Doubtless,  his  interest  in  the  subject  had  been  spurred 
on  by  a  desire  to  save  his  waning  political  fortunes,  and 
his  enemies  seem  to  have  feared  its  effect  and  aimed  to 
stop  it.  At  the  time  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  Convention, 
held  in  St.  Louis  in  October,  1849,  Foote  was  asked  and 
intended  to  be  present  and  oppose  Benton's  scheme. 
Foote  urged  Calhoun  also  to  attend,  writing  that  "  it 
would  be  a  great  thing  to  overthrow  him  at  home  and 
blow  up  his  humbug  project,  in  presence  of  his  own  con 
stituents."  Benton,  on  his  side,  was  quite  aware  of  the  in 
tended  opposition,  and  wrote  to  some  one  at  this  same  time 
from  St.  Louis  that  "  Calhoun  is  at  work  here  through 
his  agents  to  defeat  my  plan  of  a  road;  perhaps,  there 
will  be  an  explosion  before  I  get  through  with  them." 


LAST    SESSION   IN    SENATE  421 

It  was,  I  think,  at  this  convention  that  Benton  first 
distinctly  formulated  that  striking  expression — "  There 
is  the  East,  there  is  India" — which  excited  much  criti 
cism  at  the  time  but  which  a  later  day  has  inscribed  on 
his  statue  as  an  imperishable  record  of  his  greatness.  It 
was  but  an  extension  of  the  ideas  of  his  articles  as  far 
back  as  1819  on  the  trade  of  the  East,  and  in  more  than 
one  earlier  speech  he  came  very  near  to  saying  the  same 
thing.  Several  times  repeated  in  slightly  varying  forms 
in  Congress,  with  the  "  Debates"  recording  that  he  al 
ways  pointed  at  the  time  to  the  West,  it  was,  moreover 
often  said  by  him  on  the  stump,  and  Senator  Vest  "  heard 
him  at  a  little  town  on  the  Missouri  River,  standing  with 
his  right  arm  extended,  declare  with  the  air  and  tones  of 
an  ancient  prophet  '  There  is  the  East ;  there  is  the  road 
to  India.'  " 

At  the  St.  Louis  Pacific  Railroad  Convention  he  was 
loudly  called  for  on  the  second  day,  and  "  took  the  stand 
amidst  the  most  rapturous  applause."  There  was  not  un 
naturally  an  undercurrent  of  bitter  rivalry  among  mem 
bers  as  to  the  line  on  which  the  road  should  be  built,  and 
I  think  it  was  this  which  to  some  extent  led  to  the  selec 
tion  of  Douglas  as  chairman  in  the  hope  of  keeping  him 
and  the  Chicago  route  from  gaining  too  great  prominence 
on  the  floor.  Benton  also  in  a  certain  sense  tried  to  steer 
clear  of  the  question  of  the  route  and  to  urge  only  the 
building  of  a  railroad,  but  his  speech  was  at  bottom  the 
strongest  appeal  for  the  St.  Louis  line  between  latitudes 
38°  and  39°.  He  wrought  the  assemblage  up  to  the  high 
est  pitch  of  enthusiasm  and  was  again  greeted  with  great 
applause,  as  he  closed  by  saying : 

"Let  us  rise  to  the  grandeur  of  the  occasion.  Let  us  complete 
the  grand  design  of  Columbus  by  putting  Europe  and  Asia  into 
communication,  and  that  to  our  advantage,  through  the  heart  of  our 
country.  Let  us  give  to  his  ships,  converted  into  cars,  a  continued 
course  unknown  to  all  former  times.  Let  us  make  the  iron  road, 


422       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

and  make  it  from  sea  to  sea — States  and  individuals  making  it  east 
of  the  Mississippi,  the  nation  making  it  west.  Let  us  now  in  this 
convention  rise  above  everything  sectional,  personal,  local.  Let  us 
beseech  the  National  Legislature  to  build  the  great  road  upon  the 
great  national  line  which  unites  Europe  and  Asia — San  Francisco  at 
one  end,  St.  Louis  in  the  middle,  the  national  metropolis  and  great 
commercial  emporium  at  the  other ;  and  which  shall  be  adorned 
with  its  crowning  honor — the  colossal  statue  of  the  great  Columbus — 
whose  design  it  accomplishes,  hewn  from  a  granite  mass  of  a  peak 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  overlooking  the  road — the  mountain  itself 
a  pedestal  and  the  statue  a  part  of  the  mountain — pointing  with  out 
stretched  arm  to  the  western  horizon,  and  saying  to  the  flying  passen 
gers  '  There  is  the  East,  there  is  India/  "  * 

*  The  main  authorities  for  the  statements  in  the  text  as  to 
Benton's  relation  to  railroads  are  as  follows :  C.  D.,  vol.  i.,  1824-25, 
p.  712;  vol.  vi.,  1829-30,  p.  116.  C  G.,  29th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  1171; 
30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  ion;  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  49,  399,  470- 
474,  625;  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  mi,  1112,  1554;  3ist  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  pp.  56-58;  33d  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  73-82.  Ben- 
ton's  speech  of  1844  in  St.  Louis  is  reprinted  in  part  in  H.  H. 
Bancroft's  Oregon,  i.,  p.  510,  from  the  Oregon  Spectator  of  Sep 
tember  17,  1846.  The  proceedings  of  the  St.  Louis  Pacific  Railroad 
Convention  will  be  found  in  the  Missouri  Republican  of  October  16, 
1849,  and  subsequent  days.  Benton's  speech  is  printed  in  the  paper 
of  the  I7th,  and  what  I  have  reproduced  is  also  to  be  found  in 
Gen.  F.  P.  Blair,  Jr.'s,  Address.  His  letter  of  November  14,  1853, 
to  the  Citizens  of  Missouri  on  The  Pacific  Railroad  was  sent  me  by 
his  son-in-law,  Colonel  Richard  T.  Jacob.  I  do  not  know  where  it 
was  printed.  His  address  in  Boston  was  delivered  in  Tremont 
Temple  to  the  Mercantile  Library  Association.  Copies  of  this  and 
some  other  like  speeches  are  in  the  Philadelphia  Library.  His  speech 
"  We  own  the  country  from  sea  to  sea,"  etc.,  is  in  C.  G.,  30th  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  p.  473.  McDuffie's  blast  against  Oregon  is  in  C.  G.,  27th 
Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  p.  200.  Senator  Vest's  speech  is  in  Benton  Statue 
Proceedings,  p.  90.  Calhoun's  Correspondence,  pp.  1204,  1205,  for 
Foote's  letter;  and  for  Benton's  letter  on  the  same  subject  see 
letter  of  October  14,  1849,  in  collections  of  Historical  Society  of 
Pennsylvania.  John  F.  Darby's  Personal  Recollections,  p.  181,  etc. 
Mrs.  Fremont's  Souvenirs  of  My  Times,  p.  61. 


CHAPTER      XXII 

ELECTED     TO     THE     HOUSE     OF     REPRESENTATIVES HIS 

COURSE  AS  A  MEMBER THE  KANSAS-NEBRASKA  BILL 

AND  REPEAL  OF  THE  MISSOURI  COMPROMISE SQUAT 
TER  SOVEREIGNTY OPPOSES  THE  GADSDEN  PURCHASE 

DEFEATED  FOR  RE-ELECTION 

BEING  out  of  the  Senate  and  thus  unable  to  work  in 
the  way  he  had  long  been  accustomed  to,  Benton  did  not 
by  any  means  cease  activity  or  give  up  his  political  labors. 
On  the  contrary,  he  worked  hard  at  the  "  Thirty  Years' 
View;"  but,  as  he  wrote  to  Hannibal  Hamlin  in  1851 
"  this  does  not  interfere  with  other  works — the  redemp 
tion  of  the  State  of  Missouri  from  the  Whigs  and  nullifi- 
ers,  and  the  presidential  election."  *  This  particular  let 
ter  was  written  with  a  view  to  securing  the  nomination  of 
Levi  Woodbury  for  the  presidency  in  1852,  and  doubtless 
is  to  be  looked  upon  as  merely  one  surviving  witness  to 
a  ceaseless  purpose  on  the  part  of  its  writer  to  keep  in 
close  touch  with  public  affairs. 

I  have  not  found  other  actual  evidence  of  his  doings 
in  politics,  but  the  next  year  (1852)  he  was  elected  to  the 
House  of  Representatives  by  the  Democrats  of  his  faction 
in  the  First  Missouri  District,  of  which  St.  Louis  formed 
a  part.  According  to  the  St.  Louis  Republican  (Whig) 
he  nominated  himself  for  this  office,  after  the  other  faction 
(which  of  course  took  to  itself  the  name  Democratic)  had 
nominated  a  Mr.  Bogy.  There  was  also  a  Whig  candi 
date,  Samuel  Caruthers,  in  the  field. 

*  Letter  dated  Washington,  June  16,  1851,  of  which  a  copy  was 
kindly  sent  me  by  Gordon  Woodbury,  Esq.,  of  Manchester,  New 
Hampshire. 

423 


424       LIFE   OF   THOMAS   HART   BENTON 

Dyer  tells  a  story  of  this  campaign  which  should  be 
repeated  here,  though  it  seems  to  me  an  unlikely  one,  as 
it  is  told,  for  Benton  had  throughout  his  life  refused  to 
take  part  in  those  joint-debates  on  the  stump  which  the 
story  presupposes.  It  is  said  that  in  this  instance  the 
opposing  candidate  (there  is  nothing  to  show  which  one) 
was  narrating  some  stories  derogatory  to  Benton's  char 
acter  for  honesty,  whereupon  the  latter  advanced  upon 
him,  glaring  fiercely,  and,  shaking  his  fist  in  his  face,  said 
aloud,  "  You  lie,  sir !  You  lie,  sir !  I  cram  the  lie  down 
your  throat,  sir."  It  was  of  course  supposed  that  there 
would  be  a  duel,  but  the  opposing  candidate  merely  turned 
pale  and  went  on  with  his  speech.  The  Missouri  auditory, 
the  story  goes  on,  had  no  respect  for  a  person  so  devoid 
as  this  of  what  they  called  "  game-blood,"  almost  turned 
their  backs  on  him,  and  Benton  had  matters  his  own  way 
during  the  rest  of  the  canvass. 

He  was  elected  by  a  plurality  of  nearly  six  hundred 
votes,  and  enormously  distanced  his  Democratic  competi 
tor,  the  nearly  complete  vote  being  given  by  the  Republi 
can  as  Benton  7844,  Bogy  2072,  and  Caruthers  7260.  It 
was  maintained  by  some  that  a  great  many  Whigs  voted 
for  Benton,  but  this  was  emphatically  denied  by  the  Re 
publican.  On  August  5  this  Whig  paper  summed  up  as 
follows  its  opinion  of  the  canvass :  "  Such  a  contest  has 
never  been  witnessed  in  the  United  States,  and  Colonel 
Benton  has  the  right  to  claim  as  great  a  coup  d'etat  as 
Louis  Napoleon.  .  .  .  He  has  gained  a  triumph  and  won 
a  position  by  means  and  under  circumstances  that  we  did 
not  think  any  portion  of  the  American  people  were  capable 
of  submitting  to,  and  to  which  no  other  population  than 
that  of  this  city  and  district  would  have  submitted.  .  .  . 
He  started  out  with  a  determination  to  browbeat,  bully, 
and  lash  his  opponents,  more  particularly  those  in  his  own 
party,  and  indulged  in  the  most  unusual  language  of 
vituperation,  abuse,  and  denunciation." 


HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES          425 

In  the  House  of  Representatives,  Benton  was  treated 
with  the  greatest  respect,  was  assigned  to  the  chairman 
ship  of  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs,  which  he  had 
so  long  held  in  the  Senate,  and  was  evidently  much  looked 
up  to  as  one  of  the  fathers,  members  often  gathering 
around  in  front  of  him  when  he  rose  to  speak ;  but,  gen 
erally  speaking,  his  career  during  his  one  term  of  service 
in  the  House  was  not  as  active,  I  think,  as  had  been  the 
case  in  the  Senate.  Possibly,  the  endless  struggle  for 
ordinary  legislation  had  become  a  little  wearisome  to  him 
with  advancing  years  and  he  was  actively  at  work  on  the 
"  Thirty  Years'  View,"  and  at  the  same  time  so  deeply 
interested  in  plans  for  a  railroad  to  the  Pacific  that  a 
speech  was  read  for  him  by  a  colleague  at  the  second  ses 
sion  during  his  absence  in  New  England  on  a  lecturing 
trip  in  the  interest  of  these  plans.  I  know  of  no  other 
instance  of  this  kind  during  his  career.  He  had  had  him 
self  excused  also  from  the  chairmanships  of  the  commit 
tees  on  Military  Affairs  and  on  the  Library,  to  which  he 
had  been  appointed,  on  the  ground  that  it  would  be  ex 
tremely  inconvenient  for  him  to  serve,  and  I  cannot  but 
suppose  that  this  also  was  owing  to  his  interest  in  matters 
outside  the  halls  of  Congress.  It  may  be  surmised,  too, 
that  he,  who  was  used  to  making  long  speeches,  found 
the  rules  of  the  House  to  limit  debate  very  irksome.  Still 
he  made  elaborate  arguments  on  two  matters  of  the 
greatest  moment. 

His  chief  speech,  and  the  one  which  impressed  itself  on 
all  those  who  served  with  him  at  the  time,  was  made  at 
the  first  session  in  regard  to  the  famous  Kansas-Nebraska 
bill.  This  measure,  with  its  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  aroused  his  bitter  indignation.  He  and  his  State 
had  been  born  into  public  life  with  and  almost  by  that 
measure,  and,  though  he  admitted  as  a  lawyer  the  tech 
nical  right  of  Congress  to  repeal  it,  yet  he  looked  upon  it 
as  something  almost  sacred  and  in  morals  far  removed 


426       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

from  any  real  right  of  abrogation  by  a  subsequent 
statute. 

Compromise  in  general  he  was  rather  fond  of  ridicul 
ing  as  being  "  so  pleasing  to  men  of  gentle  nature,"  but 
the  compromises  which  the  fathers  had  written  into  the 
Constitution  in  1787,  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  a 
few  other  like  measures  of  ancient  date,  were  in  a  high 
degree  sacred  to  him.  A  few  years  later,  he  wrote  in  his 
Dred  Scott  pamphlet  in  regard  to  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  that  "  such  a  measure  may  appear  on  the  statute- 
book  as  a  mere  Act  of  Congress,  and  lawyers  may  plead 
its  repealability,  but  to  one  who  was  contemporary  with 
the  event,  and  saw  the  sacrifice  of  feeling  or  prejudice 
which  was  made,  and  the  loss  of  popularity  incurred,  and 
how  great  was  the  danger  of  the  country  from  which  it 
saved  us,  it  becomes  a  national  compact,  founded  on  con 
sideration  higher  than  money,  and  which  good  faith  and 
the  harmony  and  stability  of  the  Union  deserved  to  be 
cherished  next  after  the  Constitution." 

The  proposed  repeal  was,  moreover,  so  suddenly  taken 
up  by  leading  Democrats  and  the  administration,  and  then 
pressed  so  strongly  by  them  as  a  party  measure,  that  Ben- 
ton's  wrath  was  aroused  at  the  evident  effort  to  drive  it 
through  with  whip  and  spur.  When  Douglas  had  intro 
duced  the  Nebraska  bill  in  question — it  being  the  ninth 
effort  to  pass  such  a  measure — not  a  word  was  in  the  bill 
itself  of  any  such  intended  repeal,  though  his  report  ar 
gued  the  question :  and  it  was  only  later  that  all  those  in 
authority  came  to  clamor  for  the  immediate  passage  of 
the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  with  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  which  it  by  that  time  contained. 

The  measure  passed  the  Senate  after  a  struggle  and 
came  to  the  House,  and  there  through  adroit  parliamen 
tary  tactics  was  forced  through  without  any  proper  debate. 
Benton  did  succeed  in  making  two  speeches  on  the  subject, 
—part  of  one  of  them  after  the  utmost  difficulty  and  only 


HOUSE    OF    REPRESENTATIVES  427 

after  a  long  parliamentary  wrangle  made  by  friends  of  his, 
— but  the  measure  was  never  half  considered;  and  there 
was  no  sufficient  opportunity  for  him  and  the  others  who 
had  the  boldness  to  come  out  openly  and  angrily  against 
the  measure,  to  instil  their  courage  into  the  weak-kneed 
who  were  in  reality  anxious  to  vote  against  it  but  did  not 
dare  to  against  the  prevailing  hue  and  cry  of  party. 

Benton  thought  the  bill  could  have  been  beaten,  and 
wrote  in  his  Dred  Scott  pamphlet,  "  There  was  spirit  in 
the  House,  and  if  a  few  of  us  could  have  had  a  chance  at 
the  bill  it  would  have  been  smashed  into  atoms  and  the 
country  roused  to  a  knowledge  of  the  meditated  crimes. 
But  there  was  no  chance."  The  previous  question  and 
other  rules  intended  to  allow  a  majority  to  carry  its  meas 
ures  were  the  means  by  which  this  deplorable  statute  be 
came  a  law. 

In  his  main  speech  Benton  denounced  and  ridiculed 
the  doctrine  of  squatter  sovereignty,  which  the  bill  was 
intended  to  establish,*  insisting  that  "  the  territories  are 
the  children  of  the  States.  They  are  minors  under  twenty- 
one  years  of  age;  and  it  is  the  business  of  the  States, 
through  their  delegations  in  Congress  to  take  care  of  these 
minors  until  they  are  of  age."  Pointing  out  the  repeated 
instances  in  which  Congress  had  driven  off  squatters  as 
"disorderly  persons,"  and  exercised  other  like  acts  of 
absolute  authority,  he  reminded  his  hearers  that  the  terri 
tory  of  Indiana  had  on  several  occasions  petitioned  Con 
gress  for  a  temporary  suspension  of  the  clause  in  the  Ordi 
nance  of  1787  to  prohibit  slavery,  but  had  uniformly 
been  refused,  and  then  he  exclaimed,  "  Oh,  squatter  sov 
ereignty  !  Where  were  you  then  ?  .  .  .  Well  do  I  remem- 

* "  It  being  the  true  intent  and  meaning  of  this  act  not  to 
legislate  slavery  into  any  State  or  Territory,  nor  to  exclude  it  there 
from ;  but  to  leave  the  people  thereof  perfectly  free  to  form  and 
regulate  their  domestic  institutions  in  their  own  way,  subject  only 
to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 


428       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

her  the  day  when  it  was  first  shown  *  in  the  Senate.  .  .  . 
It  was  in  1848,  and  was  received  as  nonsense — as  the  es 
sence  of  nonsense — as  the  quintessence  of  nonsense — as 
the  five-times  distilled  essence  of  political  nonsensicality." 
Looking,  as  he  did,  upon  the  great  measure  of  1820  as 
a  statute  of  peace,  he  foresaw  very  clearly  that  its  repeal 
would  open  wide  the  flood-gates  of  contest  over  the  slavery 
question  at  every  step,  and  he  warned  Congress  of  this 
and  told  the  South  that  neither  Kansas  nor  Nebraska 
''  would  ever  be  a  slave  State,  even  were  the  measure  car 
ried.  But  his  principal  arraignment  of  the  bill  was  on 
account  of  its  "  crooked,  insidious,  and  pusillanimous  way 
of  effecting  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line," 
and  the  "  bungling  attempt  to  smuggle  slavery"  into  all 
the  Territories  by  the  trick  of  extending  the  Constitution 
over  them,  so  as  to  claim  that,  as  the  Constitution  recog 
nized  slavery,  the  inhabitants 

"may  admit  it,  because  it  is  to  be  there  by  the  Constitution;  they 
cannot  exclude  it,  because  the  Constitution  puts  it  there.  That  is 
the  argument;  and  it  is  a  juggle  worthy  of  the  trick  of  one  egg 
under  three  hats  at  the  same  time — and  under  neither  at  any  time. 
...  I  object,"  he  said  further,  "to  this  shilly-shally,  willy- won'ty, 
don'ty-can'ty  style  of  legislation.  It  is  not  legislative.  It  is  not 
parliamentary.  It  is  not  manly.  It  is  not  womanly.  .  .  .  Three 
dogmas  now  afflict  the  land,  videlicet,  squatter  sovereignty,  non 
intervention,  and  no  power  in  Congress  to  legislate  upon  slavery  in 
Territories.  And  this  bill  asserts  the  whole  three,  and  beautifully 
illustrates  the  whole  three,  by  knocking  one  on  the  head  with  the 
other,  and  trampling  each  under  foot  in  its  turn.  ...  It  is  a  see 
saw  bill,  but  not  the  innocent  see-saw  which  children  play  on  a 
plank  stuck  through  a  fence,  but  the  up  and  down  game  of  politicians, 
played  at  the  expense  of  the  peace  and  harmony  of  the  Union,  and 
to  the  sacrifice  of  all  business  in  Congress.  It  is  an  amphibological 
bill,  stuffed  with  monstrosities,  hobbled  with  contradictions,  and 
Badgered  f  with  a  proviso. 

*  See  foot-note,  ante,  p.  373. 

t  Alluding  to  the  proviso  moved  by  Badger  in  the  Senate  and 
enacting  that  the  laws  relating  to  slavery  prior  to  1820  should  not 
be  revived  by  the  act. 


HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES  429 

"Amphibology  is  a  cause  for  the  rejection  of  bills,  not  only 
by  Congress,  but  by  the  President  when  carried  to  him  for  his 
approval.  General  Jackson  rejected  one  for  that  cause.  .  .  .  And 
now  what  is  the  excuse  for  all  this  disturbance  of  the  country ;  this 
breaking  up  of  ancient  compromises ;  arraying  one-half  of  the  Union 
against  the  other,  and  destroying  the  temper  and  business  of  Con 
gress?  What  is  the  excuse  for  all  this  turmoil  and  mischief?  We 
are  told  it  is  to  keep  the  question  of  slavery  out  of  Congress!  To 
keep  slavery  out  of  Congress  !  Great  God !  It  was  out  of  Congress ! 
completely,  entirely,  and  forever  out  of  Congress,  unless  Congress 
dragged  it  in  by  breaking  down  the  sacred  laws  which  settled  it. 
The  question  was  settled,  and  done  with.  There  was  not  an  inch 
square  of  territory  in  the  Union  on  which  it  could  be  raised  without 
a  breach  of  a  compromise."  * 

This  speech  was  made  subject  to  the  hour-rule,  and 
the  Speaker's  gavel  fell  long  before  it  was  completed. 
Wentworth  then  arose  and  asked  leave  for  Benton  to  go 
on,  but  objection  was  made,  and  a  long  and  dogged  par 
liamentary  wrangle  began,  while  Wentworth  appealed  in 
vain  that  "  the  oldest  man  in  Congress,  a  man  who  was 
here  when  the  Missouri  Compromise  was  adopted"  might 
be  heard.  Wentworth  maintains  that  this  right  had  al 
ways  been  allowed  by  courtesy  to  John  Quincy  Adams, 
but  it  was  only  after  a  prolonged  contest  and  by  dint  of 
moving  some  trifling  amendment  that  a  right  to  go  on  was 
secured  for  Benton.  Many  years  afterwards,  as  appears 
by  a  note  quoted  by  Wentworth,  Israel  Washburn  still 
remembered  the  scene  vividly  and  that  the  Speaker's  gavel 
fell  as  Benton  was  beginning  a  new  paragraph  with  the 
words  "  amphibology,  sir,"  and  that  after  the  long  wran 
gle,  he  began  once  more  with  the  same  words. 

At  the  close  of  the  speech,  there  was  a  rush  to  con 
gratulate  him,  but  Wentworth  tells  us  that  "  his  voice 
drowned  that  of  all  others  in  denouncing  nullification,  se 
cession,  Calhounism,  and  a  base  conspiracy  against  the 
freedom  of  speech;"  and  on  the  way  home  he  kept  this 

*C  G.,  33d  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  557~56i.  See  also 
33d  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  986-989;  1232,  1233. 


430       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

up  steadily,  glorying  loudly  in  his  own  success.  The  same 
writer  adds,  too,  that  when  Benton  went  to  Chicago  in 
the  spring  of  1857  to  deliver  a  lecture  before  the  Young 
Men's  Association,  he  said,  "  When  I  am  gathered  to  my 
narrow  home,  I  desire  that  my  friends  shall  deeply  en 
grave  on  my  tombstone  '  He  voted  against  the  abrogation 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  gloried  in  the  deed,' ' 
and  in  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View"  he  not  only  wrote  of  the 
lamentable  consequences  of  the  repeal,  but  predicted  that 
the  historian  of  the  future  might  have  to  find  in  that  meas 
ure  the  cause  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.* 

This  speech  on  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  was,  in 
Wentworth's  opinion,  the  only  one  of  any  political  signifi 
cance  that  Benton  made  in  the  House;  but  he  made  at 
least  one  other  leading  speech  f  on  a  very  important  meas 
ure,  the  underlying  inducement  to  which  was  his  mistrust 
of  the  ultimate  intentions  of  the  South.  The  House  was 
called  upon  at  the  first  session  to  appropriate  ten  million 
dollars  to  carry  out  the  Gadsden  purchase,  and  Benton 
tried  hard  but  utterly  unavailingly  to  defeat  it.  One  of 
the  purposes  of  this  purchase  was  to  secure  a  Southern 
route  for  a  Pacific  railroad;  and  Benton,  who  was 
strongly  in  favor  of  what  he  called  the  "  central  national" 
line,  between  the  parallels  of  38°  and  39°,  was  naturally 
opposed  to  the  measure  from  the  start  on  this  ground,  and 
came  later  to  believe  that  the  main  design  in  the  plan  was 
to  build  a  railroad  which  would  necessarily  inure  to  the 
benefit  of  the  South  in  the  event  of  a  separation.  He 
believed,  too,  that  Gadsden  had  been  authorized  to  offer 
fifty  million  dollars  to  Mexico  for  a  vastly  larger  tract 
and  suspected  to  be  true  the  current  rumor  that  Soule 
was  to  offer  two  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars  or  some 
like  sum  for  Cuba. 


*  View,  ii.,  pp.  143,  715. 

tC.  G.,  33d  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  1031-1037. 


HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES          431 

Within  a  few  years,  also,  as  appears  from  his  Dred 
Scott  pamphlet,  he  suspected  designs  to  buy  other  outlying 
possessions  and  was  most  strongly  opposed  to  any  such 
plan.  Indeed,  some  years  before,  during  the  interminable 
disputes  over  the  results  of  the  Mexican  war,  he  had  ex 
pressed  the  opinion  that  "  the  American  republic  had  no 
way  of  establishing  a  government  over  a  province  until 
it  is  incorporated  within  the  Union.  Spare  me,  he  re 
peated,  from  the  exhibition;  ...  he  would  also  desire 
that  they  might  be  spared  from  being  presented  to  the 
world  in  the  attitude  of  conquerors  legislating  about  a 
subjugated  province,  and  altering  the  law  of  nations  by 
statute."  * 

Benton's  course  in  the  House  as  to  the  Pacific  Rail 
road  has  been  gone  into  elsewhere,  and  need  not  be  men 
tioned  further.  Homestead  bills  were  introduced  into 
both  Senate  and  House  at  the  first  session,  and  Benton 
voted  for  the  House  bill  but  does  not  seem  to  have  taken 
any  active  part  on  the  subject.  And  at  the  second  session 
he  seems  to  have  taken  even  less  part  than  at  the  first  and 
to  have  made  no  speech  of  length  or  importance. 

It  was  at  the  second  session  that  he  had  a  speech  read 
for  him  against  a  proposition  to  repeal  the  clause  of  the 

*  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  42.  Compare  the  opinion  of 
John  Quincy  Adams,  who  wrote  in  his  Diary  (vol.  xii.,  p.  57),  on 
June  16,  1844,  of  a  call  by  Daniel  D.  Barnard  to  take  leave  and  of  a 
long  conversation  had  with  him.  "  This  Texas  annexation,"  he  goes 
on,  "  we  deem  the  turning-point  of  a  revolution  which  transforms 
the  North  American  Confederation  into  a  conquerinj  and  warlike 
nation.  Aggrandizement  will  be  its  passion  and  its  policy.  A 
military  government,  a  large  army,  a  costly  navy,  distant  colonies, 
and  associate  islands  in  every  sea,  will  follow  of  course  in  rapid  suc 
cession.  A  President  for  four  years  will  be  a  laughing-stock.  A 
Captain-General  for  life,  and  a  Marshal's  truncheon  for  a  sceptre, 
will  establish  the  law  of  arms  for  the  Constitution,  and  the  skeleton 
forms  of  war  and  slavery  will  stalk  unbridled  over  the  land. 
Blessed  God,  deliver  us  from  this  fate!" 


432       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

Kansas-Nebraska  Act  which  repealed  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  on  the  grounds  that  it  could  not  pass  and  would 
only  further  disquiet  the  settlers  in  Kansas.  And  he  also 
opposed  the  suggestion  contained  in  this  same  proposition 
to  refuse  to  admit  Kansas  as  a  slave  State.  He  held  that 
this  would  deprive  her  of  the  right  she  was  entitled  to  to 
settle  that  subject  for  herself — a  right  inherent  in  State 
sovereignty — and  then  to  be  admitted  to  the  Union,  if  she 
had  the  other  requisites.  And  in  this  speech  he  said  that, 
as  soon  as  he  had  heard  of  the  intention  of  societies  in  the 
East  to  send  settlers  to  Kansas  so  as  to  control  the  elec 
tion,  he  had  predicted  "  that  it  would  produce  precisely  the 
effect  that  has  been  seen — rouse  and  exasperate  the  people 
of  the  Missouri  frontier,  and  lead  to  the  scenes  which  have 
occurred.  Why  did  I  think  so?  Because  I  knew  some 
thing  of  human  nature,  and  that  foreign  interference  is  a 
thing  which  it  will  not  endure." 

Late  in  this  his  last  session  he  found  occasion  once 
more  to  oppose  a  pending  bill  for  bounty  lands  to  soldiers 
on  the  ground  he  had  so  often  urged,  that  its  provisions 
would  lead  to  endless  cheating  of  both  them  and  the  gov 
ernment,  and  it  is  characteristic  of  his  sense  of  public  duty 
that  he  was  on  this  occasion  at  his  station  in  the  House 
for  the  purpose  of  opposing  this  bill,  though  the  ruins  of 
his  house  in  Washington  were  at  the  moment  still  smoul 
dering  after  the  fire  which  had  the  day  before  burned  it 
to  the  ground  with  many  valuable  papers,  including  a 
large  mass  of  manuscript  of  his  "  Thirty  Years'  View." 
And  it  is  also  characteristic  of  this  most  tenacious  man 
that  his  last  act  in  the  House — the  last  thing  he  ever  did 
on  earth  as  a  member  of  a  law-making  body — was  to  pro 
test  against  being  counted  as  a  member  of  the  House 
after  midnight  of  March  3,  1855,  in  accordance  with  the 
belief  he  had  acquired  early  in  his  career  from  Macon  and 
others,  but  which,  whether  for  good  or  for  ill,  had  long 
been  left  behind  in  the  development  of  our  public  law. 


HOUSE   OF   REPRESENTATIVES  433 

Benton  had  thus  been  elected  to  the  House  as  a  Demo-  k 
crat,  but  had  again  found  himself  constrained  by  a  sense 
of  public  duty  to  put  himself  in  opposition  to  the  party 
which  had  elected  him,  on  what  was  by  far  the  chief  meas 
ure  of  the  period.  In  this  instance  again,  there  is  on  his 
part  no  sign  of  hesitation  or  of  a  qualm  of  fear,  and  he 
even  went  far  beyond  the  actual  need  of  the  subject  and 
denounced  in  bitter  language  the  intended  measure  and  its 
advocates.  He  had  indeed  already  fully  taken  his  stand 
in  the  opposing  ranks  that  were  semiconsciously  aligning 
for  the  approaching  struggle,  and  no  earthly  power  could 
budge  him  from  his  position. 

Greatly  as  we  must  admire  the  splendid  courage  shown 
by  him,  the  circumstances  were  such  that  it  was  quite 
inevitable  that  he  should  be  crushed  and  cast  aside,  as 
Missouri  for  the  time  being  tended  more  and  more  to 
wards  that  general  union  with  the  South,  which  was  so 
natural  a  course  for  her  to  follow.  Accordingly,  when 
election-day  came  around  again  in  1854  the  returns 
showed  a  complete  change  from  those  of  two  years  ago, 
and  there  was  a  plurality  of  very  nearly  one  thousand 
against  Benton  in  St.  Louis  alone,  and  probably  a  small 
plurality  against  him  outside  the  city  as  well.  Samuel 
Caruthers  had  been  again  nominated  against  him  by  the 
Whigs,  but  was  later  substituted  by  Luther  M.  Kennett, 
while  Trusten  Polk  was  the  candidate  of  the  anti-Benton- 
ite  portion  of  the  Democracy.  The  vote  in  the  city  was 
given  in  the  Republican  of  August  n  as  Kennett  6275, 
Benton  5297,  and  Polk  378. 

It  is  not  entirely  clear  why  the  anti-Benton  vote  was  so 
small,  but  probably  many  of  that  party  voted  for  the 
Whig  candidate.  The  "  antis"  had  evidently  gained 
greatly  in  strength  in  two  years,  and  on  the  I9th  the 
same  paper  estimated  that  the  legislature  would  consist 
on  joint  ballot  of  sixty  Democrats,  forty  Bentonites,  and 
sixty-two  Whigs,  An  eye-witness  of  die  scenes  of  that 


434       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

time,  who  was  an  opponent  of  Benton,  has  told  me  what 
a  proud  sight  he  was,  before  the  election,  walking  down 
the  street  with  a  superb  strut  and  hat  set  a  little  to  one 
side,  while  after  the  event  he  wore  his  hat  quite  straight 
and  was  a  man  of  very  different  mien.  Benton  seems 
never  to  have  borne  defeat  with  much  philosophy,  and 
doubtless  his  pride  was  fearfully  humbled  to  see  himself 
thus  so  soon  thrown  out  of  the  House  again  and  his 
power  in  Missouri  fast  ebbing  away.  No  one  could  fail 
to  see  that  his  star  was  about  to  set. 


CHAPTER     XXIII 

CHARACTER    AND    GENERAL    TENDENCIES 

BENTON'S  public  life  was  now  about  ended,  and  he 
was  never  again  to  occupy  either  a  legislative  or  any  other 
office  in  the  gift  of  the  people.  One  embittered  campaign 
did  still  lie  ahead  of  him,  but  it  soon  closed  in  crushing 
defeat,  and  even  his  persistence  could  then  find  no  breach 
in  the  lines  of  his  enemies.  Here,  then,  when  his  record 
as  a  public  man  is  about  made  up,  will  be  a  good  place 
to  stop  and  consider  his  character. 

In  the  first  place  there  is  universal  agreement  that  his 
private  life  was  most  exemplar}-.  In  a  day  when  high 
stakes  and  deep  drinking  were  very  usual  among  public 
men  and  sadly  marred  the  careers  of  many  of  his  greatest 
contemporaries,  he  was  absolutely  devoid  of  these  vices. 
He  was,  usually,  too,  very  pure  and  chaste  in  thought  and 
words ;  but,  when  angered,  used  most  emphatic  language 
and  indulged  in  not  a  little  profanity. 

The  special  characteristic  of  his  home  life,  which  all 
observers  noted,  was  his  family  tenderness.  He  was  the 
most  devoted  of  husbands  and  of  fathers.  He  used  to 
say  of  himself  that  he  was  "  a  house  lamb  and  a  street 
lion,"  and  his  devotion  and  tenderness  to  his  wife  and 
children  are  emphasized  by  opponents,  as  well  as  friends. 
Mrs.  Benton  had  a  slight  stroke  of  paralysis  in  1844,  and 
during  her  slow  failure  from  that  time  until  her  death  in 
1854,  he  wrote  of  himself  that  he  "  was  never  known  to 
go  to  any  place  of  festivity  or  amusement,"  and  others 
tell  how  large  a  share  of  his  leisure  time  during  all  these 
years  was  devoted  to  attending  upon  her.  Bay  wrote  that 

435 


436       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

he  had  repeatedly  seen  him,  in  order  "  to  enable  her  to 
enjoy  the  society  of  her  friends,  .  .  .  take  her  in  his  arms 
like  a  child  and  carry  her  to  the  parlor  and  back  again  to 
her  room." 

Several  other  authorities  speak  of  his  knightly  tender 
ness  to  her,  like  that  of  a  young  lover,  one  correspondent 
of  the  author  particularizing  that  "  it  was  a  sight  worth 
going  to  church  to  see  him  enter  the  church  with  his  wife 
on  his  arm,  walking  up  the  aisle  and  placing  her  in  the 
pew."  She  is  said  to  have  been  a  woman  of  great  force 
of  character,  as  well  as  amiable,  was  a  strict  Presbyterian, 
bred  up  among  the  Puritans  of  Rockbridge,  and  had  her 
many  intimates  distinctly  understand  that  she  did  not 
receive  visitors  on  Sunday.  Nathaniel  Macon,  who  knew 
her  in  her  earlier  married  years  in  Washington,  when  she 
went  a  good  deal  into  society,  said  that  she  and  Mrs. 
Washington  were  "  two  of  the  women  who  were  not 
altered  by  a  residence  at  the  seat  of  government." 

To  his  children  and  grandchildren  Benton  was  most 
tender,  and  they  were  devoted  to  him.  Even  John  Quincy 
Adams,  who  greatly  disliked  and  disapproved  of  Benton, 
writes  *  of  being  almost  disarmed  by  the  affection  shown 
by  him  to  his  children.  It  was  his  regular  custom  to  give 
daily  instruction  to  them,  and  these  lessons  were  rarely, 
if  ever,  subject  to  intermission;  even  in  trying  moments 
of  public  duties  the  necessary  time  was  somehow  found, 
and  a  correspondent  has  written  me  of  a  long  journey 
made  by  steamboat  in  1835,  in  company  with  Benton  and 
his  family,  and  that  Benton  would  gather  his  children 
around  him  every  morning  in  the  ladies'  cabin  and  have 
them  recite  a  lesson  in  French,  saying  that  it  was  his  pleas 
ure  and  duty  to  instruct  them  himself. 

He  was  a  large  man,  about  six  feet  tall,  and  very 
robust  and  muscular.  Stately  in  movement,  with  a  very 

*  Diary,  x.,  p.  257. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  437 

large  head,  the  strongest  features  and  fine  physique,  no 
one  could  see  him  without  feeling  that  here  was  a  man  far 
above  the  ordinary,  and  visitors  in  the  Senate  constantly 
asked  who  that  particular  member  was.  Bay  wrote  that 
"  his  personal  appearance  was  the  most  commanding  of 
any  man  I  ever  met.  At  first  glance,  a  stranger  would 
say  that  he  was  born  to  command." 

A  distinguished  judge  of  Missouri  used  to  tell  a  story 
of  how,  when  he  was  a  boy  and  living  in  a  part  of  the 
country  where  Benton  was  unknown,  he  met  one  day  in 
the  road  a  large  man  on  a  fine  horse,  and  was  so  impressed 
with  the  personal  appearance  and  dignity  of  the  horseman 
that  he  went  home  and  told  his  mother  he  had  met  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  while  in  reality  the  stran 
ger  turned  out  to  be  the  Senator  from  Missouri.  Nor 
was  Benton  at  all  unconscious  of  these  advantages,  but 
probably  took  steps  to  set  them  off.  One  informant  says 
that  he  always  walked  along  the  street  with  martial  and 
stately  tread,  slowly  and  majestically,  while  another  de 
scribes  his  walk  as  a  strut,  and  adds  that,  when  his  atten 
tion  was  called  to  one  side  in  any  way,  he  would  not  turn 
his  head  to  the  inquiry,  but  would  with  measured  motion 
swing  his  whole  body  around  on  his  heels  so  as  to  face  in 
the  desired  direction.  Some  of  his  portraits,  too,  seem  to 
exhibit  study  and  attitude. 

Another  informant  saw  Benton  taking  his  daily  ride 
in  the  streets  of  Washington  mounted  on  a  black  horse, 
probably  Avith  a  young  granddaughter  as  companion; 
and  the  whole  scene  left  the  impression  that  he  greatly 
liked  thus  to  go  out  and  show  himself  on  the  streets  in 
stately  dignity.  This  daily  or  frequent  ride  in  the  public 
view  was  one  of  the  last  things  he  gave  up. 

He  is  said  by  his  son-in-law  to  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  arising  as  early  as  four  o'clock  throughout  the  year, 
and  had  himself  regularly  scrubbed  or  curried  down  by 
his  body-servant  with  the  roughest  kind  of  a  horse- 


438       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

hair  brush.  Dyer  says  that  this  was  done  down  to  the 
hips  in  the  morning,  as  a  portion  of  a  daily  bath,  while  in 
the  afternoon  the  like  treatment  was  accorded  to  his  per 
son  from  the  hips  to  the  feet.  So  hard  was  the  brush  used 
that  Benton  would  grimly  assure  wondering  friends  that 
they  would  cry  murder,  if  barely  touched  with  the  imple 
ment,  and  when  they  shook  their  heads  and  asked  why  he 
did  it,  his  reply  was  "  The  Roman  gladiators  did  it,  sir." 
It  is  said  by  Poore  that  he  always  wore  the  high  black  silk 
neck-stock  and  double-breasted  frock-coat  of  his  youth 
ful  days,  varying  the  material  with  the  season  but  never 
the  fashion  in  which  they  were  cut. 

The  family  home  in  Washington  during  at  least  his 
last  ten  years  of  life  was  on  C  Street,  and  is  said  by  Mrs. 
Fremont  to  have  had  spacious  rooms,  and  in  the  rear  a 
large  garden  with  a  profusion  of  green  things  growing. 
Upstairs  was  the  library,  in  which  Benton  worked,  and 
which  Keyes  describes  as  a  plain  room  with  bare  walls 
and  furniture  of  the  plainest  description,  the  table  without 
a  cover.  Here  he  was  in  the  habit  of  studying  and  writ 
ing  during  the  working-hours,  when  at  home,  while  in  the 
evening  all  the  family,  including  the  children,  gathered 
in  the  drawing-room  for  rest  and  recreation,  and  all  vex 
atious  subjects  were  excluded. 

In  St.  Louis,  Benton  seems  always  to  have  stayed  with 
Colonel  J.  B.  Brant,  who  had  married  his  niece  and  whose 
house  was  at  the  northeast  corner  of  Fourth  Street  and 
Washington  Avenue,  and  later  apparently  on  the  north 
side  of  Walnut  Street  between  Fifth  and  Sixth.  There 
in  a  sunny  house  he  sought  the  open  air  all  the  time,  and 
his  daughter  says  "  he  never  breathed  indoor  air  when  he 
could  be,  head  uncovered,  in  a  bath  of  sunshine."  Or 
dinarily,  the  family  dinner-table  was  enlivened  by  bright 
and  free  conversation  in  which  the  father  took  the  lead ; 
but  now  and  then,  when  oppressed  by  some  important 
debate  in  the  Senate,  he  would  become  absent-minded,  and 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  439 

on  one  such  occasion  General  Fremont  writes  that  he 
entirely  forgot  his  duty  to  carve  for  the  family  and  sat 
abstractedly  chewing  the  cork  of  a  claret-bottle,  until  he 
was  called  to  earth,  when  he  said,  "  Child,  don't  ask 
me  to  carve  anything,  until  this  Ashburton  treaty  is 
settled." 

He  was  not  fond  of  general  society  and  probably  in 
dulged  in  its  distractions  only  so  much  as  he  was  com 
pelled  to,  unless  during  his  early  days  in  Washington. 
Absolutely  devoid  of  personal  magnetism,  and  indeed 
austere,  reserved,  and  distant,  general  society  could  not 
well  be  agreeable  to  him,  but  in  his  own  house  or  at  a 
small  dinner  with  a  few  friends  the  case  was  very  differ 
ent.  On  such  occasions,  Bay  says  that  he  was  "  the  life 
and  spirit  of  the  party  .  .  .  and  one  of  the  most  inter 
esting  men"  he  ever  saw.  All  accounts  agree  that  his 
manners  in  his  own  house  were  delightful,  and  that  he 
was  kind  and  considerate  to  all,  and  Colonel  Switzler,  a 
political  enemy,  has  written  me  that  "  in  his  rooms  at 
hotels  and  at  his  own  home  he  was  as  polite  and  affable 
as  any  man  in  public  life." 

There  was  in  him  a  vein  of  unfailing  gentleness  to 
women,  which  showed  itself  in  many  ways  and  was  truly 
expressed  in  his  calling  himself  a  house  lamb.  On  one 
occasion,  Mrs.  Fremont  writes,  one  of  his  daughters  grew 
impatient  over  some  trouble  in  tuning  her  guitar,  when 
the  father  looked  up  from  his  table  covered  with  books 
and  work,  and  said  "  Bring  it  to  me."  Then  with  a  light 
ness  of  touch  and  a  skill  which  amazed  his  children  he 
tuned  it  and  tried  a  few  chords. 

The  sight  of  "  father  playing  the  guitar"  brought  an 
outcry  from  the  youngest,  but  the  elder  children  had  some 
vague  feeling  of  the  memories  of  long  ago  running  in  his 
mind,  as  he  said,  "  I  often  tuned  their  guitar  for  my  sis 
ters  and  sang  with  them.  You,"  he  went  on  to  one  of 
them,  "  are  like  the  youngest."  Of  these  long  gone  sisters 


440       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

his  children  had  rarely,  if  ever,  heard,  though  they  knew 
many  a  story  of  the  boys. 

Like  all  men  of  his  cast,  Benton  seems  to  have  had  his 
own  way  in  his  family  and  was  doubtless  a  little  of  a  tyrant. 
Thus  his  son-in-law  says  that  he  observed  that,  when  Ben- 
ton  wanted  a  thing  done  in  a  particular  way,  it  would 
usually  be  done  in  that  way.  He  himself  had  experiences 
of  the  kind,  in  which  suggestions  of  some  change  were 
quietly  and  pleasantly  brushed  aside;  and  he  tells  of 
another  case  in  point.  Once,  one  of  the  grandchildren  had 
a  beautiful  head  of  hair,  to  the  delight  of  its  mother ;  but 
Benton  thought  it  good  for  the  hair  to  be  clipped  short, 
so  one  day  without  a  word  all  those  beautiful  locks  were 
shorn  off,  to  the  daughter's  great  disgust. 

Staying  once  with  his  son-in-law,  as  the  time  for 
departure  approached,  the  son-in-law  wrote  to  the  mail 
steamer  for  a  berth  and  told  Benton  he  had  done  so ;  but 
the  Senator  had  a  habit  in  this  matter  which  was  not  to 
be  broken  in  upon  for  such  a  trifle  as  a  stateroom,  and 
merely  said,  "  I  always  take  the  first  boat,  sir/'  And, 
when  they  went  down  to  the  landing  for  him  to  start,  he 
insisted  upon  hailing  two  small  boats  in  succession  which 
chanced  to  pass  before  the  mail  steamer,  and  would 
undoubtedly  have  gone  off  on  either  one  of  them,  in 
accordance  with  his  habit  of  taking  the  first  boat,  only 
they  both  ignored  the  hail  and  then  the  mail-boat  came 
along. 

At  the  same  time  he  was  by  no  means  fond  of  certain 
of  the  inconveniences  of  travel  and  when  there  was  a  lack 
of  room  at  some  hotel,  he  announced  that  "  Benton  sleeps 
in  the  same  bed  with  no  man,"  and  told  a  younger  mem 
ber  of  the  party  that  he  could  take  one  of  the  mattresses 
off  the  bed  and  sleep  on  the  floor.  Other  habits  in  travel 
ling  were  also  strong,  and  he  always  stopped  at  the 
same  hotel.  Once,  when  approaching  a  place  and  asked 
what  hotel  he  would  go  to,  his  friend,  who  was  a  Whig, 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  441 

was  surprised  at  his  naming  one  kept  by  a  Whig  and 
proposed  another  instead,  saying  it  was  Democratic;  to 
which  Benton  replied  "  D — n  it,  sir,  do  you  think  I  take 
my  politics  in  my  belly?" 

He  seems  to  have  been  generally  supposed  to  have  little 
reverence  for  the  Christian  religion,  but  Bay  says  there 
was  no  foundation  for  this  report,  and  adds  that  during 
his  long  years  in  the  Senate,  he  always  had  a  pew  in 
church — generally  the  Presbyterian — and  attended  service 
very  regularly  himself,  as  well  as  requiring  the  like 
attendance  of  his  family.  Folk's  "  Diary,"  too,  shows 
that  Polk  frequently  saw  Benton  at  the  same  church 
which  he  himself  attended. 

One  conspicuous  point  in  his  character  was  his  unwil 
lingness  to  stand  imposition  of  any  kind,  and  a  story  is 
told  by  Bay  and  others  of  how  some  sharp  showman,  hav 
ing  found  a  horse  with  unusually  long  and  shaggy  hair, 
advertised  widely  for  exhibition  a  "  woolly  horse  caught 
in  a  wild  state  on  the  plains  by  General  Fremont.  Admis 
sion  twenty-five  cents."  The  showman  was  reaping  a  rich 
harvest,  but  Benton,  whose  house  was  near  by,  was  highly 
indignant  and  published  a  card  in  the  newspapers,  de 
nouncing  it  as  a  gross  imposition.  And  when  the  crowds 
still  came  to  see  the  marvel,  he  got  out  a  warrant  against 
the  showman  and  had  him  arrested  for  a  criminal  offence 
and  thus  succeeded  in  stopping  the  fraud. 

There  were  many  qualities  contributing  to  make 
Benton  the  man  he  was.  Endowed  with  splendid  health, 
apparently  at  all  times  except  for  a  short  period  during 
early  manhood,  I  have  not  even  come  across  any  hint  of 
his  ever  being  sick,  until  his  last  mortal  illness.  The 
flecks  of  blood  from  his  throat,  which  we  are  told  by  his 
daughter  constantly  followed  long  speaking,  may  have 
been  some  indication  of  a  lurking  weakness,  but  after 
youth  this  never  found  expression  in  any  serious  way,  and 
his  long  career  called  upon  him  time  and  again  for  the 


442       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

hardest  and  most  continuous  work  under  conditions  of 
confinement  and  in  the  bad  air  of  crowded  rooms. 

His  strength  endured,  too,  until  near  the  end,  and  as 
an  old  man  he  made  campaigns  which  but  few  young  ones 
are  capable  of.  He  was  to  some  extent  conscious  of  this, 
and  Colonel  Switzler  has  written  me  that,  when  once  pub 
licly  asked  his  age,  the  answer  he  gave  was  "  chronologi 
cally  Benton  is  about  sixty-eight;  but,  if  Benton's  coun 
try  or  Benton's  friends  want  anything  done,  Benton  is 
forty -five."  Another  chief  element  in  his  make-up,  prob 
ably  the  chief  one  of  all,  was  his  immense  boldness;  he 
seems  hardly  to  have  known  what  fear  was,  and  was 
always  ready  and  anxious  to  face  enemies  and  bear  them 
down  by  some  far  more  fierce  attack  than  they  had  ven 
tured  to  make  on  him.  Again,  his  deep  love  of  country 
and  firm  conviction  that  the  people  of  whom  he  was  one 
had  before  them  a  most  brilliant  destiny,  had  a  profound 
influence  upon  his  career  at  every  step.  But  these  sub 
jects  will  be  referred  to  more  at  length  later. 

Next  should  be  mentioned  his  life-long  thirst  after 
knowledge  from  any  and  every  source.  By  no  means 
always  from  books,  but  by  a  thousand  observations  and 
comparisons  of  his  own  and  by  profound  thought  from 
these,  and  then  by  seeking  facts  for  further  mental  pabu 
lum  from  every  conceivable  source.  Hunters  and  trap 
pers,  scouts,  wild  half-breeds,  Indian  chiefs,  Jesuit  mis 
sionaries,  army  officers  back  from  the  plains,  were  all 
eagerly  sought  by  him  and  contributed  those  facts  which 
made  his  vast  knowledge  of  unsettled  America ;  and  the 
like  was  the  case  as  to  almost  every  other  subject  of  in 
formation.  Mrs.  Fremont  has  referred  to  the  various 
characters  brought  to  her  father's  house  by  his  interest 
in  the  Panama  Railroad  and  the  surveys  for  railroads  to 
the  Pacific,  and  says  that  she  had  heard  highly  interesting 
conversations  at  their  interviews  in  which  efforts  were 
made  to  solve  the  character  of  the  vast  unsettled  area  by 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  443 

philosophical  deductions  like  that  which  led  Jefferson  to 
propose  the  expedition  of  Lewis  and  Clark — his  con 
clusion  that  where  so  great  a  water-system  as  that  of  the 
Missouri  flowed  to  the  eastward  of  the  vast  snow-capped 
Rockies,  some  other  great  river  would  certainly  be  found 
to  drain  the  westward  slope. 

In  these  conversations,  too,  was  probably  brought  out 
the  idea  which  Benton  says  that  he  and  Humboldt  had 
independently  made — that  buffaloes  were  the  best  civil 
engineers.  The  observation  had  its  chief  bearing  on  the 
vital  question  of  where  to  find  the  lowest  and  easiest 
;  mountain  passes,  and  more  recent  observation  seems 
only  to  have  varied  it  to  the  extent  of  saying  that  the  deer 
and  elk  precede  the  buffalo.  Bay,  too,  writes  that  once 
in  St.  Louis  he  found  Benton  "  closeted  with  the  cele 
brated  Kit  Carson,  who,  in  the  midst  of  maps  and  charts, 
was  explaining  to  him  the  character  and  location  of  what 
he  considered  the  most  desirable  route  between  Indepen 
dence  and  Santa  Fe.  Upon  another  occasion,  he  intro 
duced  to  us  Collins,  the  great  explorer  and  guide  of  the 
Indian  country,  whom  he  had  invited  to  his  house  in 
Washington,  and  during  an  hour  we  spent  with  them, 
the  subject  of  conversation  was  confined  to  the  topogra 
phy  and  character  of  the  plains  and  Pacific  slope." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Benton  was  unable  by 
mental  constitution  to  grasp  and  follow  long  trains  of 
abstract  thought,  rather  despising,  for  example,  Calhoun's 
wonderful  architectural  skill  in  this  branch,  yet  there  was 
no  department  of  knowledge  touching  the  actual  life  of 
his  fellow-men  upon  which  he  did  not  seek  and  get  facts 
and  consequent  knowledge.  Riding  one  day  near  Wash 
ington,  he  saw  some  laborers  engaged  apparently  in  bury 
ing  something  in  the  ground  at  regular  intervals,  and 
found  by  inquiry  that  they  were  planting  corn.  Then, 
when  he  asked  what  it  was  they  were  burying  with  it,  he 
learned  that  they  were  putting  two  herring-heads  in  the 


444       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

ground  with  each  grain  for  the  purpose,  they  told  him, 
of  making  it  come  up.  Some  further  questions  brought 
out  that  it  only  grew  at  best  to  a  very  moderate  height 
and  was  gathered  in  baskets. 

The  knowledge  of  the  comparative  infertility  of  these 
older  regions  was  then  used  by  him  in  the  Senate  in  a 
debate  on  a  Land  Bill  to  point  his  "  conviction  that  the 
country  truly  rich,  truly  independent,  truly  fitted  for  the 
production  of  republicans,  is  the  country  in  which  pro 
visions  are  produced  in  the  greatest  abundance,  a  country 
in  which,  as  in  the  vast  and  magnificent  valley  of  the  Mis 
sissippi,  there  is  neither  count  nor  weight  nor  measure  for 
anything  that  is  given  to  man  or  beast  to  eat.  In  such 
a  country,  the  animal  spirits  run  high,  .  .  .  and  it  is 
certainly  the  duty  of  a  wise  and  paternal  government  to 
aid  their  removal  to  it"  by  making  easy  the  acquisition 
of  land.* 

When  to  his  health  and  this  thirst  after  knowledge  is 
added  the  immense  gift  of  a  wonderful  memory,  which 
was  Benton's  in  the  very  highest  degree,  the  possessor 
needs  but  a  few  other  qualities  to  become  a  man  of  mark : 
and  an  obituary  notice  of  him  hardly  exaggerated  when 
it  said  that  "  with  a  readiness  which  was  often  surprising, 
he  could  quote  from  a  Roman  law  or  a  Greek  philosopher, 
from  Virgil's  Georgics,  The  Arabian  Nights,  Herodotus, 
or  Sancho  Panza,  from  the  sacred  prophets,  the  German 
reformers,  or  Adam  Smith;  from  Fenelon  or  Hudibras, 
from  the  financial  reports  of  Necker  or  the  doings  of  the 
Council  of  Trent;  from  the  debates  on  the  adoption  of 
the  Constitution  or  from  the  intrigues  of  a  kitchen  cabi 
net,  or  from  some  forgotten  speech  of  a  deceased  member 
of  Congress." 

I  have  mentioned  his  acquirement  of  the  French  lan 
guage  at  St.  Louis,  and  of  Spanish  at  Washington  during 

*  C  D.,  vol.  ii.,  part  i,  1825-26,  p.  731. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  445 

:he  time  when  Missouri  was  awaiting  admission  into  the 
Union:  and  to  this  must  be  added  that  his  son-in-law 
writes  that  the  family  said  he  had  at  about  this  same  time 
taken  regular  lessons  in  Latin  and  Greek,  and  during  his 
career  he  often  showed  more  knowledge  of  these  lan 
guages  than  he  can  well  have  gained  in  his  early  educa 
tion. 

He  always  wanted  to  know  the  actual  facts  about  a 
matter,  and  Wentworth  says  that  one  of  his  favorite  ex 
pressions  was  "  What  are  the  facts?  .  .  .  Give  us  the 
iacts ;"  while  Webster  said  *  that  he  knew  more  political 
facts  than  any  other  man  he  ever  met — even  more  than 
John  Quincy  Adams — and  possessed  a  wonderful  fund 
of  general  knowledge.  The  former  authority  adds  that 
,it  was  a  frequent  custom  of  Benton's,  "  when  a  Senator 
made  a  mistake  as  to  any  historical  fact  or  manifested 
any  desire  to  become  acquainted  with  any  matter  which  he 
did  not  thoroughly  understand,  of  calling  a  boy  to  him, 
sending  him  to  the  library  for  a  book  containing  the 
information,  finding  the  page,  and  sending  it  to  the 
Senator  with  his  compliments."  And  Harvey  mentions 
a  similar  case  in  his  Anecdotes  of  Webster. 

During  the  debates  on  Oregon,  Webster  was  about  to 
speak  and  wanted  to  secure  a  book,  as  to  which  his  recol 
lection  was  very  indistinct,  to  illustrate  some  point.  After 
ransacking  his  own  memory  and  sounding  in  vain  the 
lore  of  librarians,  he  was  about  to  give  up  in  despair, 
when  it  occurred  to  him  to  ask  Benton.  The  latter 
thought  a  moment  and  said  he  would  try  and  find  it: 
and,  when  Webster  came  back  to  the  Senate  in  about  an 
hour,  there  upon  his  desk  not  only  was  the  very  book,  but 
the  leaf  was  turned  down  at  the  particular  page  he  had 
been  seeking  for,  Benton  having  been  able  to  divine 

*  Mr.  Dockery  in  Benton  Statue  Proceedings,  p.  10,  and  other 
authorities. 


446       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

exactly  for  what  it  was  wanted,  though  nothing  had  been 
said  as  to  the  purpose. 

His  memory  was  so  well  known  that  it  is  evident  at 
times  that  members  were  a  little  afraid  to  differ  with 
him.  In  the  Oregon  debate,  Cass  quoted  the  story  of 
Mrs.  Masham  and  the  cup  of  tea  spilled  upon  her  silken 
gown,  and  referred  to  it  as  having  tended  to  produce  war, 
but  Benton  in  reply  called  attention  to  the  blunder,  and 
reminded  the  Senate  that  the  effect  had  been  directly  the 
opposite.  Cass  then,  acknowledging  the  error,  tried  to 
excuse  himself  by  saying  that  Benton  had  probably 
refreshed  his  memory  over  night,  but  the  latter  inter 
jected  "  I  have  not  looked  at  it  for  forty  years."  * 

In  another  instance  Archer  introduced  a  map  as  new, 
but  Benton  at  once  pointed  out  the  terrible  error  that  it 
was  as  old  as  1750  and  utterly  unreliable  for  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  used,  and  in  the  famous  "  battle  of  the 
maps/'  as  it  was  called,  when  a  well-known  map  disap 
peared  from  the  Foreign  Office  in  London  during  the 
Ashburton  negotiation,  Benton  referred  in  debate  "  to  the 
King's  map,  with  the  Utrecht  line  upon  it,  as  well  as  the 
Maine  boundary  line  upon  it  (all  written  in  the  old  King's 
own  hand),"  and  spoke  of  a  British  member  of  Parlia 
ment's  having  said  that  it  had  a  strong  red  line  where  we 
said  the  Maine  boundary  was,  marked  in  King  George's 
handwriting  "  This  is  Oswald's  line ;"  and  then  went  on 
that,  when  that  map  should  reappear,  on  it  "  will  be 
found  another  strong  red  line  about  the  tenth  of  an  inch 
wide,  in  another  place,  with  these  words  written  on  it 
"  Boundaries  between  the  British  and  French  possessions 
in  America  as  fixed  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht."  And  a 
few  years  later  he  read  in  the  Senate  in  confirmation  of 
this  statement  an  extract  from  a  recent  letter  in  our  De 
partment  of  State  from  Everett  to  Webster,  in  which 

*  C  G.,  2Qth  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  583,  589. 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  447 

the  former  spoke  of  having  seen  Oswald's  map  on  which 
the  boundary  between  the  British  and  French  possessions 
in  America  "  as  fixed  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht"  was 
marked  by  a  very  distinct  line  at  least  a  tenth  of  an  inch 
broad.* 

In  no  respect  was  his  memory  more  marked  than  in 
his  geographical  knowledge.  Always  a  subject  of  par 
ticular  interest  to  him,  he  had  a  remarkable  knowledge  of 
the  geography  of  the  world  and  many  a  time  described 
the  minute  relations  of  some  part  of  his  own  country  or  a 
foreign  one,  with  an  accuracy  which  few  can  equal.  In 
1850,  during  the  debates  on  the  Compromise  Measures, 
when  a  member  was  basing  an  argument  on  a  map  of 
Humboldt's,  Benton  interrupted  to  ask  where  the  map 
was  published,  and,  when  the  answer  came,  asked  if  the 
boundaries  of  New  Mexico  were  not  marked  by  dotted 
lines,  and  said,  "  I  am  just  as  well  acquainted  with  them 
[the  dotted  lines  in  question]  as  with  the  path  from  the 
Capitol  to  my  house."  Then,  without  even  looking  at 
the  map,  he  mentioned  some  other  marks  on  it  and  told 
from  just  what  source  Humboldt  had  derived  it.f 

And  his  son-in-law  wrote  me  that,  when  coming  back 
from  California  in  1847  ne  met  Benton  for  the  first  time, 
the  latter  at  once  entered  on  a  long  conversation  about  the 
great  West,  and  adds,  "  What  impressed  me  greatly,  and 
afterwards  some  thirty  or  so  of  intelligent  mountain  men 
who  afterwards  were  in  Washington  on  the  court  martial 
of  Colonel  Fremont,  was  his  wonderful  knowledge  of 
that  great  region  between  the  Mississippi  River  and  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  We  would  often  say  to  each  other  '  Why, 
he  knows  more  than  we  who  have  travelled  over  it.'  ' 
He  seems  to  have  had,  too,  the  faculty  to  foresee  at  what 
geographical  points  vast  aggregations  of  men  would  later 

*  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  855,  914.  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong., 
1st  Sess.,  p.  1766. 

t  C  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  1265,  1266. 


448       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

be  found,  and  Colonel  Switzler  has  written  me  that  in  a 
speech  at  Boonville,  while  discussing  the  Pacific  Rail 
road,  Benton  predicted  that  there  would  eventually  be 
built  at  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw  River  (where  Kansas  City 
now  is)  one  of  the  great  cities  of  the  Union. 

His  knowledge  of  trade  and  commerce  in  the  broad 
sense  was  very  wide,  and  he  had  the  most  liberal  and 
original  views  in  regard  to  it.  Of  course,  his  speeches 
on  the  salt  tax  and  other  such  questions  were  carefully 
prepared  for  the  occasion,  but  he  had  a  vast  fund  of  stored 
knowledge  upon  all  branches  of  trade,  which  often  served 
him  in  good  stead.  Nor  did  trade  mean  to  him  merely  the 
profit  to  be  put  in  the  pocket  of  some  one  or  more  of  his 
particular  constituents,  but  he  fully  appreciated  its  vast 
influence  upon  national  development  and  in  the  spread  of 
civilization ;  and  it  may  be  safely  said  that  this  view  was 
usually  the  one  predominant  in  his  mind.  Nowhere  is 
this  more  plainly  shown  than  in  his  life-long  effort  to 
secure  for  America  the  trade  of  the  Indies  and  his  appre 
ciation  of  the  influence  thus  to  be  exerted  by  us  on  the 
Japanese,  the  Chinese,  and  other  backward  peoples. 

He  was  generally  in  close  accord  with  the  growth  of 
popular  opinion  as  to  human  rights  and  favored  the 
amelioration  of  the  harsh  laws  of  earlier  times  in  more 
than  one  instance.  In  the  Tennessee  Senate  as  early  as 
1809  he  voted  in  favor  of  the  abolition  of  imprisonment 
for  debt,  upon  the  honest  surrender  by  the  debtor  of  his 
property,*  and  in  the  Senate  on  January  17,  1825,  was 
one  of  a  minority  to  vote  for  its  abolition  in  general.  And 
again  on  February  12,  1849,  ^e  expressed  himself  as 
strongly  in  favor  of  abolishing  flogging  in  the  navy. 

But  he  was  far  from  merely  swimming  with  the  tide, 
and  strongly  opposed  for  example  the  growing  extension 
of  bankruptcy  laws,  Voluntary  bankruptcy  in  particular 

*  C  G.,  27th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  89. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  449 

he  disapproved  of  and  insisted  that  the  young  should  not 
be  suffered  to  say  in  contracting  a  debt  "  The  law  stands 
ready  to  release  me  from  it,  whenever  I  choose  to  throw 
it  down."  He  seems  to  have  had,  too,  a  very  sound  per 
ception  in  advance  as  to  the  impression  which  a  proposed 
course  of  political  action  would  have  upon  the  public. 

This  served  him  in  good  stead  in  many  of  the  political 
battles  of  his  day,  and  one  instance  is  very  striking  and 
serves  to  show,  too,  that  he  appreciated  that  the  masses 
have  a  far  more  sound  sense  than  some  give  them  credit 
for.  In  1832,  when  there  was  warm  rivalry  to  succeed 
Jackson,  some  of  the  leading  candidates,  who  were  mem 
bers  of  the  Senate,  got  up  a  plan  to  ruin  Van  Buren  by 
rejecting  his  nomination  as  minister  to  England  on  the 
ground  of  alleged  unpatriotic  action.  This  was  largely 
fathered  by  Calhoun,  who  was  so  convinced  of  its  success 
that,  when  the  rejection  was  carried,  he  was  heard  to  say, 
"  It  will  kill  him  dead,  sir,  kill  him  dead,  sir ;  he  will 
never  kick,  sir,  never  kick." 

Benton,  on  the  contrary,  appreciated  from  the  incep 
tion  of  the  movement  that  the  masses  would  understand 
that  the  rejection  was  merely  a  design  of  jealous  rivals  to 
ruin  an  opponent,  and  was  so  clear  in  this  view  that  he  did 
not  even  oppose  the  measure  and  was  quite  willing  to  see 
the  rebuff  given.  He  says  that,  when  the  rejection  was 
carried,  he  leaned  over  to  a  member  near  by  and  said, 
"  You  have  broken  a  minister  and  elected  a  Vice- Presi 
dent  :"  *  and  in  a  little  over  a  year  Van  Buren  was  elected 
to  that  office. 

It  has  been  said  already  in  the  account  of  Benton's 
early  years  that  he  was  throughout  life  vain  and  ego 
tistical,  and  the  stories  are  legion  which  are  told  of  this 
characteristic  in  his  make-up.  Nor  does  he  seem  to  have 
been  unconscious  of  the  tendency ;  indeed,  when  some  one 

*  View,  L,  pp.  214-220. 
29 


450       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

referred  to  it,  his  reply  was,  "  So  I  have  been  informed,  but 
I  speak  of  what  I  know  to  be  the  truth,  while  others  cloak 
their  remarks  about  themselves  in  a  mock  humility  and 
hypocrisy."  Another  version  of  this  story  has  it  that 
his  answer  was,  "  Sir,  the  difference  between  these  little 
fellows  and  myself  is  just  this :  "  I  have  an  Ego,  and  they 
have  not." 

He  undoubtedly  belonged  to  that  class  who  think  they 
know  more  and  are  wiser  than  others.  Thus,  a  story 
is  told  by  Keyes  of  a  slight  and  modest  Jerseyman  who 
called  to  explain  his  invention  of  a  salt-boiler,  but  got  no 
further  than  the  first  words,  for  Benton  at  once  took  up 
the  subject,  gave  him  a  dissertation  of  an  hour's  length 
upon  salt  from  the  days  of  Lot's  wife  to  modern  times 
and  then  bowed  him  out  with  a  "  Good-morning,  sir," 
which  frightened  out  of  his  head  any  thoughts  he  may 
have  had. 

And  the  narrator  of  this  story  tells  an  experience  of 
his  own,  which  serves  further  to  illustrate  the  supreme 
and  domineering  way  in  which  Benton  at  times  took  the 
upper  hand  with  his  visitors.  Coming  to  Washington 
from  California,  where  he  had  become  a  believer  in  Ben- 
ton's  hard-money  theories,  Keyes  called  on  Benton  and 
explained  how  admirably  the  theory  worked  on  the  Pacific 
slope,  and  then  went  on  to  explain  his  conversion,  and 
added  that  he  had  sworn  in  his  own  heart  never  to  take 
another  bank-note. 

All  this  was  well  enough,  but,  when  he  continued  that 
upon  landing  recently  in  New  York  and  driving  home  in 
a  hack,  he  had  handed  the  driver  a  five-dollar  gold-piece 
and  allowed  him  to  hand  back  a  three-dollar  bill  in 
change,  Keyes  writes  that  "  Old  Bullion's  countenance 
underwent  a  change  and  with  an  air  and  voice  that  would 
have  suited  a  Caliph  of  Bagdad  he  rebuked  me — '  Young 
man,'  said  he,  '  you  were  wrong  to  take  the  three-dollar 
note — you  had  no  right  to  barter  your  principles.  The 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  451 

paper  you  received  was  probably  without  intrinsic  value. 
Such  notes  pass  from  hand  to  hand  like  other  counters  of 
gamblers  and  are  not  intended  to  be  redeemed.  They 
enrich  knaves,  sir,  and  rob  the  industrious.  Better  return 
to  your  California  teachings.'  A  little  more  in  the  same 
strain  and  I  left,  feeling  as  though  I  had  been  tossed  by  a 
bull." 

Benton  thought,  too,  that  the  country  in  general 
appreciated  him  at  his  own  estimate.  He  very  often 
referred  to  himself  in  the  third  person  as  "  Benton" — 
which  Mr.  Birch  says  he  pronounced  "  Baneton" — and 
his  death-bed  autobiography  speaks  of  the  long  list  of 
measures  of  which  he  was  the  author  as  being  "  known 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land — repeated 
with  the  familiarity  of  household  words  from  the  great 
cities  on  the  seaboard  to  the  lonely  cabins  on  the  frontier 
— and  studied  by  the  little  boys  who  feel  an  honorable 
ambition  beginning  to  stir  within  their  bosoms,  and  a 
laudable  desire  to  know  something  of  the  history  of  their 
country."  And  another  instance  of  like  staggering  ego 
tism  is  told  by  Dyer. 

When  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View"  was  about  to  come 
out,  the  publishers  sent  some  one  to  consult  with  him 
as  to  the  number  of  copies  it  would  be  advisable  to  print, 
but  the  answer  was,  "  Sir,  they  can  ascertain  from  the  last 
census  how  many  persons  there  are  in  the  United  States 
who  can  read,  sir,"  and  no  other  suggestion  would  he 
make.  He  was  always  convinced,  too,  that  he  had  torn 
an  opponent  to  tatters  in  debate,  and  a  story  is  told  how, 
during  the  debates  on  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850, 
after  he  had  kept  the  Senate  in  a  roar  of  laughter  for  a 
long  time  at  Clay's  expense  by  his  story  of  the  old  and 
young  Dr.  Townsend's  Sarsaparilla,  he  hurried  to  join 
some  members  ahead  of  him,  as  they  left  Congress,  and 
delightedly  exclaimed  "  Didn't  I  give  Clay  h-11?" 

On  one  occasion,  it  is  said  he  was  asked  how  he  was 


452       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

coming  out  in  one  of  his  later  campaigns,  and  his  reply 
was,  "  I  shall  crush  my  enemies  as  an  elephant  crushes 
piss-ants  under  his  tread."  And  again  on  being  told  after 
a  speech  that  he  had  evidently  made  an  impression  on  the 
people,  "  Always  the  case,  always  the  case,  sir,"  was  the 
reply.  "  Nobody  opposes  Benton  but  a  few  black 
jack  prairie  lawyers;  these  are  the  only  opponents  of 
Benton.  Benton  and  the  people,  Benton  and  Democracy 
are  one  and  the  same,  sir;  synonymous  terms,  sir;  syn 
onymous  terms,  sir." 

Again  it  is  said  that  one  day  he  had  intended  to 
answer  a  speech  of  Calhoun,  but  hearing  that  Calhoun 
was  prostrated  by  illness  and  could  not  be  present,  he 
announced :  "  Benton  will  not  speak  to-day,  for  when  God 
Almighty  lays  his  hands  on  a  man,  Benton  takes  his  off." 
His  hatred  of  Calhoun  in  his  latter  years  was  almost 
boundless,  and  in  one  of  his  speeches  to  a  great  crowd, 
"  Citizens,"  he  is  said  to  have  declaimed,  "  no  man  since 
the  days  of  Cicero  has  been  abused  as  has  Benton.  What 
Cicero  was  to  Catiline,  the  Roman  conspirator,  Benton 
has  been  to  John  Catiline  Calhoun,  the  South  Carolina 
nullifier. 

"  Cicero  fulminating  his  philippics  against  Catiline  in 
the  Roman  forum;  Benton  denouncing  Calhoun  on  the 
floor  of  the  American  Senate.  Cicero  against  Catiline — 
Benton  against  Calhoun." 

This  story  was  given  me  by  Colonel  Switzler,  but  it 
ought  to  be  added  that  in  his  Fayette  speech  on  September 
I,  1849,  Benton  denied  what  was  apparently  a  story  then 
current,  that  he  had  called  Calhoun  Catiline,  and  said  he 
"  could  not  be  so  unjust  to  the  brave  Roman  conspirator 
as  to  compare  the  cowardly  American  plotter  to  him." 
And  in  his  Jefferson  City  speech  in  his  same  appeal  cam 
paign  he  gave  what  he  called  a  schedule  of  Calhoun's 
effects  and  stock  in  trade,  one  item  of  which  read  "  the 
bones  of  three  thousand  followers  strewed  alone  my  politi- 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  453 

cal  path  since  the  first  commencement  of  nullification  and 
disunion  in  1830." 

He  was,  moreover,  often  outrageously  personal  in  his 
criticisms  and  in  references  to  his  opponents.  Thus,  in 
some  speech  in  1849,  ne  was  reading  the  names  of  mem 
bers  of  the  Missouri  legislature  and  making  comments  on 
them,  and,  when  he  came  to  those  beginning  with  "  D," 
he  stopped  and  said  he  smelled  a  nullifier.  A  member 
named  "  Davies"  was  present — having  come  to  hear  some 
one  else  dressed  down — and  on  this  remark  of  Benton's 
arose  at  once,  saying  that  he  supposed  the  speaker 
referred  to  him.  Benton  replied,  "  I  never  called  your 
name,  sir.  Turn  your  profile  to  the  audience,"  and  when 
Davies  (as  he  afterwards  said),  like  a  fool,  did  so,  Benton 
said,  "  Citizens,  that  is  not  the  profile  of  a  man ;  it  is  the 
profile  of  a  dog."  * 

On  some  other  occasion  in  his  latter  years  he  was 
speaking  in  Missouri  against  the  enemies  who  were  try 
ing  to  defeat  him  for  the  Senate.  Among  these  was  a 
Judge  English,  of  whom  Benton  said,  "  There  is  little 
Tommy  English;  he,  too,  wants  Benton's  seat  in  the 
United  States  Senate.  Now,"  he  went  on,  "  suppose  little 
Tommy  could  get  it  and  take  a  seat  over  where  Benton 
sat,  and  a  distinguished  foreigner  should  be  in  the  gal 
lery  and  ask  to  have  Benton's  seat  pointed  out  to  him,  and 

he  looked  at He  would  involuntarily  say,  '  What 

thing  is  that  in  Benton's  seat  ?' '  And  John  M.  Palmer 
heard  him  say  of  another  aspirant  for  his  seat  in  the 
Senate,  "  As  well  might  a  tumble-bug  aspire  to  fill  the  seat 
of  an  elephant." 

The  same  writer  adds  that  he  described  one  of  his 
enemies  as  the  "  man  whose  patronymic  signifies  the 

*  This  story  was  told  me  by  Hon.  Isaac  H.  Sturgeon,  for  many 
years  Comptroller  of  the  city  of  St.  Louis.  He  writes  that  he  heard 
Colonel  Davies  himself  tell  the  story  and  laugh  at  it. 


454       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

smallest  particle  of  bread,"  and  another  named  Lamb  as 
one  "  whose  name  calls  to  mind  an  infant  sheep,"  and 
Colonel  Switzler  adds  that  this  latter  characterization  was 
brought  out  in  a  public  speech.  Palmer  says  that  he 
and  his  friend  said  good-bye  to  Benton,  as  the  steamboat 
went  off  and  just  as  he  delivered  a  terrible  philippic 
against  his  enemies,  saying,  "  The  history  of  the  world 
shows  two  crops  of  antis — Anti-Benton  and  Anti-Christ," 
and  adds  that,  as  they  returned  to  Alton,  they  concluded 
that  no  one  had  a  better  right  to  be  an  egotist  than  Benton 
had. 

He  rarely  or  never  used  the  gentle  powers  of  persua 
sion  with  halting  friends,  but  would,  on  the  contrary, 
try  to  bear  them  down  with  an  avalanche  of  abuse.  Prob 
ably  Mr.  Birch  is  right  in  saying  that  he  had  few  or  no 
confidants  and  recognized  but  two  conditions  in  life,  that 
of  leader  and  that  of  follower.  Convinced  of  his  own 
fitness  to  rule,  he  demanded  that  others  should  obey  and 
permitted  little  or  no  dissent  or  criticism.  Bay  thinks  he 
might  have  succeeded  in  his  appeal  campaign,  had  he 
been  a  little  yielding,  and  tells  one  instance  out  of  many 
in  which  his  implacable  manners  made  an  enemy  of  one 
who  might  easily  have  continued  a  friend. 

While  he  was  making  a  speech  in  the  court-house, 
this  friend  sent  a  slip  of  paper  up  to  the  rostrum,  asking 
him  to  give  his  views  on  the  Wilmot  proviso,  but  Benton 
wrongfully  looked  upon  the  request  as  an  act  of  hostility 
and  indignantly  flung  the  paper  from  him,  and  thus  made 
an  enemy  of  an  influential  Democrat.  Senator  Vest  tells 
of  another  case  in  point.  On  the  occasion  of  some  speech 
by  Benton  in  Missouri,  a  highly  respectable  and  cultivated 
citizen,  who  was  an  undoubted  Democrat  and  had  been 
a  supporter  in  the  main  for  twenty-five  years,  came  up 
after  the  speech  to  shake  hands.  But  he  had  been  guilty 
of  expressing  disapproval  of  Benton's  course  as  to 
Mexico,  so  the  oroffered  hand  was  neglected,  and  Benton 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  455 

simply  looked  him  over  from  head  to  foot  without  a  sign 
of  recognition.  When  then  the  gentlemen  bowed  and 
mentioned  his  name,  saying  to  Benton  that  possibly  he 
had  forgotten  him,  the  latter  drew  himself  up  to  his  full 
height  and  said  in  tones  that  could  be  heard  in  every  part 
of  the  building,  "  Sir,  Benton  once  knew  a  man  by  that 
name,  but  he  is  dead ;  yes,  sir,  he  is  dead." 

Still  another  instance  has  been  given  me  by  Colonel 
Switzler.  A  Colonel  Aycock,  whom  Benton  knew  and 
who  was  an  admirer  and  unwavering  friend,  ventured 
.  during  a  speech  by  Benton  to  a  crowded  and  excited  meet 
ing  upon  the  experiment  of  rising  to  ask  a  question  but 
failed  inadvertently  to  take  off  his  hat.  The  question  is 
said  to  have  been  both  pertinent  and  respectful,  but  Ben- 
ton  scowled  upon  him,  and  said  in  a  loud  and  angry 
voice,  "  Who  is  this  man,  citizens,  who  dares  to  stop  Ben- 
ton  in  a  speech?''  And  when  a  dozen  voices  answered, 
"Aycock,  Colonel  Aycock,"  Benton  went  on,  "Aycock? 
No,  citizens,  no ;  not  a  cock,  but  a  hen,  rather.  Take  off 
your  hat,  sir,  and  take  your  seat,"  and  then  he  went  on 
with  his  speech. 

When  his  attention  was  once  called  to  the  published 
statement  of  a  distinguished  opponent,  his  remark  was, 
"  Send  him  word  that  Benton  says  he  lied  from  the  bot 
tom  of  his  belly  to  the  root  of  his  tongue,  and  from  the 
root  of  it  out  to  the  tip."  Again,  in  1852,  one  E.  C. 
Blackburn,  a  candidate  for  the  State  legislature,  having 
said  at  some  meeting  that  Benton  was  a  "  free-soiler," 
and  Benton  being  told  one  evening  that  Blackburn  was 
in  the  audience,  he  called  out  in  his  speech  to  know 
whether  there  was  a  man  named  Blackburn  in  the  crowd. 
When  Blackburn  replied  affirmatively,  Benton  asked 
whether  it  was  true  that  he  had  called  him  a  free-soiler. 
Blackburn  hesitated  in  giving  a  direct  answer,  but  Benton 
repeated  the  question,  spelling  "  free-soiler"  out  letter  by 
letter ;  and  Blackburn  then  answering  affirmatively,  Ben- 


456       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ton  said,  "  Citizens,  this  man  Blackburn  has  no  heart,  he 
only  has  a  gizzard  and  he  has  lied  upon  Benton  from  the 
bottom  of  his  gizzard  to  the  tip  end  of  his  tongue." 
Blackburn  was  naturally  much  excited,  but  could  only 
say,  "  Colonel  Benton,  I  have  no  redress ;  you  are  a  much 
older  man  than  I  am." 

During  the  campaign  on  his  appeal  from  the  Missouri 
resolutions  in  1849,  Claiborne  Jackson  and  two  other 
leading  enemies  attended  one  of  his  meetings  and  took 
front  seats  with  a  view  to  interrupting  him  with  ques 
tions,  but  the  interruptions  did  not  occur,  after  Ben- 
ton  early  in  his  speech  said,  "And  here  are  Claib.  Jack 
son  [and  the  others,  naming  them]  as  demure  as  three 
prostitutes  at  a  christening." 

The  instances  given  are  all  or  nearly  all  from  the 
bitter  campaigns  of  1849  an<^  later,  and  in  estimating  the 
weight  to  be  accorded  them  as  indications  of  Benton's 
character  and  methods  in  general,  the  reader  must  con 
stantly  bear  in  mind  that  these  were  years  of  unexampled 
passion  in  the  politics  of  Missouri  and  that  personalities 
of  the  grossest  character  were  freely  indulged  in  on  both 
sides.  Hon.  J.  H.  Birch  had  Benton  once  arrested  for 
slander  in  accusing  him  of  beating  his  wife,*  and  personal 
encounters  of  the  most  violent  sort  were  by  no  means 
unknown  among  younger  men.  It  is  said  that  Benton 
went  about  everywhere,  vigorously  cursing  all  who  dis 
agreed  with  him,  and  that  his  opponents  were  not  much 
behind  him  in  this  particular. 

These  facts  must  not  be  forgotten  in  reading  stories 
of  a  violence  of  speech  which  seems  to-day  impossible, 
nor  in  weighing  the  opinions  of  writers  whose  knowledge 
of  Benton  was  gained  exclusively  in  these  years  of  stress. 
Thus,  Colonel  Switzler  has  written  me  that  "  His  manner 
and  methods  were  unlike  any  other  political  speaker  of 

*  Letters  of  S.  P.  Chase.  DO.  471.  472. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  457 

any  party  of  whom  I  have  knowledge.  They  were  so 
unusual,  dictatorial,  and  dramatic  that  the  marvel  is  they 
were  tolerated  at  all." 

Colonel  Switzler  goes  on  that  Benton  "  was  always 
promptly  on  time  at  his  speaking  appointments,  usually 
came  in  a  carriage  from  his  hotel,  walked  directly  from 
the  carriage  to  the  rostrum  without  delaying  on  the  way 
to  talk  with  old  acquaintances  or  to  be  introduced  to  new 
ones,  and  commenced  his  speech  without  introduction  to 
his  audience."  He  adds,  too,  that  he  always  addressed  his 
hearers  as  "  citizens,"  and  not  by  the  usual  title  of  "  fel 
low-citizens,"  and  thinks  the  reason  was  that  he  "  did  not 
recognize  the  Joneses,  the  Smiths,  and  the  Johnsons  in  a 
popular  assembly  as  '  fellows'  of  his."  In  regard  to  his 
manner,  the  same  authority  says  that  "  as  a  popular  ora 
tor,  he  was  '  a  rough-rider,'  and  moved  his  audiences  by 
the  fervency  and  power  of  argument,  illustration,  and  in 
vective.  He  wielded  the  force  of  a  cyclone ;  was  a  '  steam- 
engine  in  breeches ;'  never  indulged  in  poetical  quotations, 
anecdotes,  or  flights  of  fancy." 

Some  other  writers  give  a  milder  picture  of  his  man 
ner.  Thus,  Mrs.  Maury,  who  knew  him  at  an  earlier  date 
and  chiefly  in  the  Senate,  writes :  "In  his  public  deport 
ment,  and  especially  when  speaking,  he  has  much  sena 
torial  dignity — is  rarely  excited;  his  action  and  gestures 
are  expressive.  .  .  .  The  habitual  expression  of  his  coun 
tenance  is  calm  and  elevated.  ...  He  has  that  gentle 
self-possession  of  manner  which  is  so  usual  in  those  who 
are  conscious  of  superior  strength."  Foote  wrote  in  his 
latter  years  that  Benton's  "voice  was  to  the  last  most 
harsh  and  untunable,  his  gesticulation  was  clumsy  and 
ungraceful,"  but  a  more  friendly  authority  (Senator 
Bradbury)  wrote  me  that  "  as  an  orator  and  debater  he 
had  few  superiors.  He  had  the  advantage  of  a  good  per 
sonal  appearance  and  a  good  voice.  His  bearing  was 
dignified  with  a  little  tendency  to  hauteur.  His  manner 


458       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

was  clear  and  emphatic.  No  one  could  make  a  point  more 
impressive.  .  .  . 

"  He  appeared  at  the  best  advantage  in  executive  ses 
sion,  when  upon  some  national  question  some  of  the  older 
Senators  would  express  the  wish  to  hear  the  views  of  the 
senior  Senator  from  Missouri.  He  would  then  in  the 
blandest  and  clearest  manner  give  from  his  immense 
resources  a  clear  and  perfect  view  of  the  whole  subject." 
The  same  writer  adds  that  "  he  would  sometimes  get  so 
excited  and  show  so  much  feeling,  and  treat  the  position 
of  his  opponent  with  such  apparent  contempt  as  to  impair 
the  force  of  his  speech." 

In  regard  to  his  habits  in  the  Senate,  Benton  said  once 
that  he  always  occupied  the  same  seat  there,  and  Went- 
worth  tells  us  that  his  speeches  were  delivered  very  slowly 
so  as  to  make  every  word  audible.  When  he  had  a  strong 
point,  he  would  repeat  it  three  times,  the  same  author  goes 
on,  first  announcing  it  to  the  President;  secondly, 
"  through  you,  sir,  I  tell  the  Senate/'  he  would  say,  cast 
ing  his  eyes  over  the  Senators  to  catch  their  attention; 
thirdly,  "  through  you,  sir,  I  tell  the  people  of  the  coun 
try,"  casting  his  eyes  around  the  gallery.  Wentworth 
goes  on  that  the  announcement  that  he  was  to  speak  drew 
no  crowds,  and  it  is  very  clear  that  he  was  not  a  popular 
speaker  either  in  the  Senate  or  on  the  stump  and  did  not 
attract  an  audience.  When  he  was  to  address  the  public, 
many  came  to  hear  him  as  a  famous  man,  but  not  because 
of  charms  of  oratory,  and  in  the  Senate  he  was  twitted 
by  Clay  with  emptying  the  galleries.  Oliver  Dyer,  how 
ever,  who  as  a  reporter  had  great  opportunities  to  observe 
him,  writes  that  he  was  always  interesting  and  that  "  his 
grim  wit  and  mocking  sarcasm  gave  a  pungent  relish  to 
his  style  which  was  exceedingly  agreeable." 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  was  on  the  whole  a  most 
effective  debater,  and  he  showed  time  and  again  a  marked 
power  of  bringing  out  the  strong  points  of  his  case.  He 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  459 

would  drive  a  single  point  home  and  reiterate  it  time 
and  again,  when  he  felt  that  it  was  of  great  weight,  and 
his  speeches  often  had  great  effect  both  in  the  Senate  and 
when  read  by  the  people  afterwards.  He  had,  too,  a 
healthy  sense  which  generally  taught  him  in  advance  how 
any  subject  would  appeal  to  the  public,  and  probably  he 
always  had  in  view  a  far  wider  audience  than  the  few 
Senators  whom  he  was  addressing. 

At  the  same  time,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  reiter 
ated  too  much,  and  his  speeches  were  too  long ;  he  would 
often  bear  upon  a  subject  after  it  was  exhausted,  and 
weary  his  hearers  over  matters  they  could  not  see  the 
importance  of.  Gales  and  Seaton  refused  to  publish  cer 
tain  of  his  speeches  in  the  "  Debates,"  alleging  their 
length  as  the  reason,  and  Webster  once  showed  at  least 
his  own  feeling  when  he  wrote  his  wife  that  they  hoped 
that  day  to  finish  the  land-bill,  "  if  Mr.  Benton  should  not 
wear  us  all  out  by  an  endless  speech — which  he  threatens 
to  do."  Harriet  Martineau  also  refers  to  him  as  "  the 
one  interminable  speaker."  *  Many  of  his  speeches  as 
published  in  the  "  Debates"  are  of  such  length  that  a  col 
lection  would  fill  a  vast  number  of  volumes. 

But  even  some  of  the  longest  are  intensely  interesting 
and  will  amply  repay  careful  reading.  Thus,  his  great 
speech  on  the  Oregon  question,  which  covers  fifteen  pages 
(forty-five  columns)  of  the  large  Congressional  Globe, 
and  from  which  I  have  quoted  parts,  cannot  be  read  with 
out  advantage,  for  its  author  was  pouring  out  his  long- 


*  Retrospect  of  Western  Travel,  i.,  pp.  179, 180.  Miss  Martineau's 
judgment  is  in  other  respects  so  ludicrously  erroneous  as  to  be 
worthy  of  reproduction.  "  Near  them,"  she  says,  "  sate  Colonel 
Benton,  a  temporary  people's  man,  remarkable  chiefly  for  his  pom 
posity.  He  sate  swelling  amid  his  piles  of  papers  and  books,  look 
ing  like  a  being  designed  by  nature  to  be  a  good-humored  barber 
or  innkeeper  but  forced  by  fate  to  make  himself  a  mock-heroic 
Senator." 


460       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

reasoned  thoughts  upon  subjects  of  vast  importance  and 
difficulty  which  he  had  been  pondering  for  years.  His 
speeches  as  published  seem,  too,  to  be  shorter  than  they 
actually  were,  for  Dyer,  who  reported  him  as  a  young 
man,  says  he  would  often  ramble  on  in  a  discursive  way 
for  hours,  "  dealing  blows  at  every  head  he  could  find/' 
and  make  a  speech  that  would  fill  from  six  to  ten  col 
umns  ;  but,  after  it  was  written  out  and  submitted  to  him, 
would  ruthlessly  cut  out  extraneous  matter  and  often 
reduce  it  to  two  or  three  columns,  to  the  great  distress 
of  an  impecunious  reporter  paid  by  the  column.  In  one 
instance  which  has  been  mentioned  he  spoke  against  time 
to  prevent  the  confirmation  of  General  Kearney's  nom 
ination;  and  his  speech  actually  extended  over  part  or 
all  of  the  executive  sessions  of  thirteen  days,  and  covered 
sixty-two  pages  of  the  Congressional  Globe. 

He  was  fond  of  emphasizing  a  point  by  a  concrete 
instance  to  illustrate  it,  as  in  the  "  Granny  White"  story 
in  arguing  for  the  land-laws  he  advocated,  and  I  have 
observed  cases  in  which  he  asked  questions  of  the  Senate 
as  to  some  event  of  recent  public  affairs  during  the  course 
of  a  speech,  and  managed  to  force  an  answer  which  of 
course  always  went  to  show  that  he  and  his  party  had 
been  right.  Thus,  when  Webster  was  in  his  opinion  con 
ceding  far  too  much  to  the  British  in  the  "  Caroline"  case, 
Benton  forced  the  Senate  apparently  to  say  "  Yes"  to  his 
allegation  that  the  preceding  Senate  had  fully  approved  of 
Forsyth's  bolder  course,  and  in  1836,  when  there  was 
some  reason  to  fear  the  doings  of  a  French  fleet  on  our 
coast,  he  scolded  the  Senate  fiercely  for  having  been  the 
cause  at  the  prior  session  of  our  naval  unpreparedness, 
and  forced  the  body  apparently  to  admit  that  such  was  the 
case,  and  then  the  bill  to  increase  the  navy  passed  easily.* 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  i,  1835-36,  pp.  427,  etc.    C.  G.,  27th  Cong., 
1st  Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  42-46. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  461 

Ridicule  was  a  weapon  which  he  used  at  times  with 
effect,  though  generally  speaking  his  wit  was  rather 
heavy.  Thus,  when  some  enterprising  people  were  in 
1855  asking  Congress  for  a  grant  of  two  million  acres  of 
land  in  return  for  their  laying  a  subterranean  line  of  tele 
graph  to  the  Pacific,  Benton  told  the  House  the  scheme 
was  ridiculous.  Its  advocates,  he  said,  did  not  live  near 
enough  to  the  country  concerned  to  have  heard  of  the 
digger  Indians;  and  then  he  went  on  to  say  that  those 
lynx-eyed  beings  would  recognize  at  once  from  the 
ground  that  something  was  hidden  and  would  probe  to 
find  out  what  was  there.  They  lived  largely  on  lizards 
which  they  dragged  from  the  ground  by  a  long  stick 
with  a  hook  on  it,  and  Benton  said  "  this  wire  will  be 
a  God-send  to  these  diggers.  They  .  .  .  will  bless  this 
government  .  .  .  for  this  liberal  supply  of  fifteen  hun 
dred  or  two  thousand  miles  of  wire,  every  part  of  which 
they  will  cut  into  three-inch  pieces  and  make  into  hooks, 
to  hook  out  these  lizards.  ...  In  that  point  of  view,  it 
will  be  a  God-send  to  the  Indians,  but  destruction  to  the 
lizards  [great  laughter].  It  is  no  laughing  business.  It 
will  be  an  immense  accommodation  to  the  digger  Indians, 
but  cruel  upon  lizards  [laughter]."  After  having  been 
very  materially  modified,  the  bill  finally  passed  the  House, 
Benton  voting  in  the  negative. 

On  another  occasion  he  was  at  least  largely  the  means 
of  defeating  a  growing  habit  of  unduly  extending  the 
functions  of  the  Patent  Office,  which  was  then  beginning 
to  collect  and  publish  agricultural  statistics  and  to  buy 
seeds.  Benton  opposed  the  practice  with  ridicule,  but  his 
speech  is  not  preserved ;  the  "  Debates"  merely  record 
that  he  held  up  one  of  the  packages  of  seeds  and  "  in  a 
speech  full  of  characteristic  humor,  and  which  excited 
much  merriment  in  the  chamber  .  .  .  alluded  to  the 
'  flash-names/  as  he  styled  them,  labelled  on  the  packages 
of  seeds ;  spoke  for  instance  of  '  the  thousand-headed  cab- 


462       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

bage;'  humorously  described  the  excitement  which  the 
announcement  of  such  a  wonderful  plant — affording  three 
cabbages  a  day  throughout  the  entire  year! — was  calcu 
lated  to  produce  on  the  minds  of  the  unsuspecting  farm 
ers  and  their  wives,  and  adverted,  with  becoming  pathos, 
to  the  sad  disappointment  of  the  confiding  agricultu 
rist."  The  bill  was  recommitted  with  instructions  to 
report  amendments  to  confine  the  Patent  Office  to  its 
proper  sphere.* 

If  his  wit  was  generally  heavy,  some  of  his  replies  to 
an  opponent  seem  to  me  to  have  been  excellent  and  to 
exhibit  a  rapier-like  skill  which  one  would  hardly  expect 
from  a  man  of  his  heavy  make-up.  An  instance  in  point 
has  already  been  quoted  in  his  answer  to  Webster's  ex 
travagant  claims  on  behalf  of  Nathan  Dane  in  the  debate 
on  Foot's  resolution,  and  again  in  one  of  his  earliest  Ore 
gon  efforts,  when  the  Senate  was  barely  willing  to  listen 
at  all  and  would  by  no  means  allow  much  time  to  the 
subject,  after  Dickinson  had  made  some  calculations  as 
to  the  number  of  months  necessary  for  any  future  mem 
bers  of  Congress  to  go  from  Oregon  to  the  Capital  and 
back,  which  resulted  in  showing  that  but  few  days  in  the 
year  would  be  left  to  remain  in  Washington,  Benton  re 
plied  merely  that  he  "  looked  upon  these  calculations  and 
problems  as  so  many  dashes  of  the  gentleman's  wit,  and 
admitted  that  wit  was  an  excellent  article  in  debate, 
equally  convenient  for  embellishing  an  argument  and 
concealing  the  want  of  one."  f 

He  could,  moreover,  often  dispose  very  successfully 
of  an  interruption  meant  to  mar  his  speech.  Thus  once, 
when  Porter  attempted  to  show  from  Benton's  mouth  that 
one  of  the  precedents  cited  by  the  latter  on  the  expunging 


*C.  G.,  33d  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  475-478,  503,  504-     Ibid.,  2Qth 
Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  1044. 

t  C.  D.,  vol.  i.,  1824-25,  p.  699. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  463 

resolution  was  distinguishable,  Benton  declined  to  answer, 
saying  simply  that  "  he  was  too  well  practised  in  these 
contests  to  suffer  his  fire  to  be  drawn  until  he  was  ready 
to  deliver  it,"  and  only  later  on  brought  out  very  fairly 
the  distinction  to  which  Porter  referred  and  which  Ben- 
ton  thought  immaterial.  And  on  another  occasion,  when 
he  was  rather  intimating  that  Calhoun  had  been  con 
cerned  in  filling  the  Union  with  the  cry  of  a  bankrupt 
treasury  and  Calhoun  interrupted  to  ask  whether  the  ref 
erence  was  to  him,  Benton  replied  that 

"  he  would  answer  the  gentleman  by  telling  him  an  anecdote.  It 
was  the  story  of  a  drummer  taken  prisoner  in  the  low  countries  by 
the  videttes  of  Marshal  Saxe,  under  circumstances  which  deprived 
him  of  the  protection  of  the  laws  of  war.  About  to  be  shot,  the 
poor  drummer  plead  in  his  defence  that  he  was  a  non-combatant; 
he  did  not  fight  and  kill  people;  he  did  nothing,  he  said,  but  beat 
his  drum  in  the  rear  of  the  line.  But  he  was  answered,  so  much 
the  worse;  that  he  made  other  people  fight,  and  kill  one  another, 
by  driving  them  on  with  that  drum  of  his  in  the  rear  of  the  line ; 
and  so  he  should  suffer  for  it.  Mr.  Benton  hoped  that  the  story 
would  be  understood,  and  that  it  would  be  received  by  the  gentle 
man  as  an  answer  to  his  question ;  as  neither  in  law,  politics,  or 
war,  was  there  any  difference  between  what  a  man  did  by  himself 
and  did  by  another."  * 

The  matters  we  have  been  considering-  bear  rather  on 
mere  success  in  debate  and  gladiatorial  capacity,  but  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  this  element  is  of  vast  impor 
tance  in  human  affairs.  To  mention  one  instance  in  point 
from  another  field,  how  much  effort  has  been  spent  to 
bring  back  to  memory  the  bare  personalities  of  the  mem 
orable  discussion  between  Huxley  and  Bishop  Wilber- 
force  at  the  Oxford  Meeting  of  1860,  and  yet  who  knows 
or  troubles  himself  about  the  learned  arguments  of  the 
contestants.  We  must  not  think  too  lightly  of  the  mere 
capacity  to  put  down  an  opponent ;  but  in  a  higher  sense 

*  C  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  I,  1835-36,  pp.  888,  891.  Ibid.,  vol.  xi.,  part 
i,  1834-35,  P-  377- 


464       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

also  Benton's  speeches  were  very  valuable  and  often  full 
of  historical  and  other  learning. 

Delving,  as  he  generally  did  in  important  matters,  to 
the  very  bottom  for  his  facts,  he  would  often  study  a 
subject  on  lines  which  no  one  else  had  touched,  and  he 
was  never  at  rest  until  he  reached  the  very  origin.  Pos 
sessing  in  advance  a  vast  store  of  knowledge  upon  most 
questions  and  with  a  wonderful  memory  to  bring  back 
to  him  what  he  had  learned  upon  them  in  the  past  from 
any  collateral  study  or  observation,  his  untiring  energy, 
his  very  greed  of  work,  his  practical  sense,  and  his  capac 
ity  to  marshal  complicated  facts  enabled  him  often  to 
throw  light  on  many  dark  subjects. 

It  was  he  who  in  the  debates  upon  the  Compromise 
Measures  of  1850  showed  by  an  investigation  of  the 
Mexican  laws  upon  the  subject  in  the  original  Spanish 
that  slavery  had  been  abolished  in  New  Mexico,  Again 
he  seems  to  have  made  an  extensive  examination  in  1850 
of  the  Spanish  system  of  land-laws  prevailing  in  Califor 
nia,  and  on  many  of  the  vast  number  of  subjects  which 
he  discussed  during  his  long  career,  he  had  evidently 
made  careful  studies. 

As  instances  may  be  mentioned  his  speeches  on  Ore 
gon,  on  the  salt  tax,  on  our  land  system,  on  the  bankrupt 
act  of  1841,  in  which  he  maintained  that  that  statute  for 
the  first  time  in  history  authorized  bankruptcy  at  the 
instance  of  the  bankrupt ;  and  on  the  fortification  of  our 
coasts  in  1836,  in  which  he  gave  quite  a  history  of  our 
legislation  on  that  subject.*  He  will  be  constantly  found 
going  to  foreign  authority — of  course  principally,  but  by 
no  means  exclusively,  English  and  French — in  aid  of 
what  he  had  in  hand. 


*  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  part  I,  1835-36,  p.  592.  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  appendix,  pp.  20^-32,  123-128,  737-743,  Ibid.,  27th  Cong.,  3d 
Sess.,  pp.  38,  147. 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  465 

He  always  brought  forward  a  vast  array  of  facts,  and 
used  tables  of  statistics  most  extensively, — at  times  pre 
pared  by  his  own  hand, — and  was  fully  conscious  of  the 
importance  of  appealing  to  the  mind  by  the  eye;  in 
order  to  accomplish  this  he  would  often  hold  up  and  ex 
hibit  a  map  with  a  particular  line  traced  on  it  in  color  or 
,  (as  it  seems  in  some  instances)  have  one  hung  on  which 
to  show  some  particular  point. 

With  all  these  qualities,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that, 
when  partisan  feeling  did  not  exist  too  strongly  on  his 
or  the  other  side,  he  often  carried  conviction.  Webster 
said  that  he  always  gave  much  light  on  the  subjects  he 
touched,  and  a  striking  instance  is  told  as  to  Clay.  In 
some  debate  in  the  Senate,  after  several  days'  discussion 
and  after  Clay  had  argued  against  the  pending  motion, 
Benton  spoke  mainly  in  reply  to  Clay  and  with  unusual 
effect ;  and,  when  the  vote  was  taken,  Clay  voted,  to  the 
surprise  of  every  one,  in  favor  of  the  measure.  Being 
asked  why  he  did  so,  he  is  said  to  have  replied  that  "  he 
couldn't  help  it,"  that  Benton  had  convinced  him  the  view 
he  had  taken  was  wrong — not  so  much  from  his  reason 
ing  as  from  something  connected  with  the  speech,  but  he 
could  not  explain  just  what.* 

Instances  have  been  mentioned  already  in  which  Ben- 
ton  opposed  measures  without  a  ghost  of  a  chance  of 
success,  and  this  was  a  not  infrequent  procedure  with 
him.  He  did  not  mind  at  all  being  in  a  very  small  minor 
ity  and  would  in  such  cases  express  his  opinions  quite  as 
much  as  when  public  opinion  agreed  with  him,  and  aim 
thus  in  the  end  to  succeed  in  carrying  his  views  into  effect. 
Time  and  again  he  introduced  measures  "without  the 
least  prospect  of  success"  or  opposed  those  that  were 
"  sure  to  pass"  or  introduced  resolutions  without  having 

*  Darby's  Personal  Recollections,  pp.  187,  188.  Sketch  in  Demo 
cratic  Review  for  July,  1858,  pp.  68-70. 

30 


466       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

a  thought  of  even  asking  for  a  vote,  and  not  at  all  with 
the  idea  of  wasting  time  or  of  talking  a  measure  to  death, 
but  with  the  true  instinct  of  a  statesman  aiming  to  form 
and  educate  public  opinion. 

He  was  also  quite  enough  of  a  statesman  to  give  up  at 
times  a  great  portion  of  some  measure  he  aimed  at  so 
as  to  get  it  into  such  shape  that  halting  supporters  would 
vote  with  him  and  he  could  carry  a  part  of  his  plan. 
I  have  come  across  some  instances  in  which  he  indulged 
in  "  log-rolling"  to  a  moderate  extent, — as  all  success 
ful  public  men  must  probably  do, — as  in  1850,  when  he 
secured  an  appropriation  of  seventy-five  thousand  dollars 
for  a  custom-house  in  St.  Louis  by  uniting  it  with  the 
same  measure  for  Cincinnati,  after  both  had  been  de 
feated  separately.  In  his  legislative  capacity,  as  in  all 
departments  of  life,  he  seems  hardly  to  have  known  what 
discouragement  meant  and  at  least  had  no  comprehen 
sion  of  despair  under  difficulties  or  of  giving  up.  He 
would  fight  his  battle,  whether  singly  or  in  company, 
for  years  or  a  lifetime,  and  seems  to  have  generally  had 
some  half-divine  confidence  that  in  the  end  public  opinion 
would  come  around  to  his  way  of  thinking.  Plenty  of 
instances  of  this  persistence  have  appeared,  but  at  the 
same  time  he  had  the  horse  sense  at  times  to  wait  for  a 
more  favorable  day,  and,  for  instance,  announced  in  1837 
that  he  would  postpone  his  efforts  as  to  his  land  meas 
ures  until  the  new  census  should  become  operative  and 
the  West  gain  representation. 

Benton  has  been  charged  by  some  with  indulging  in 
gross  partisanship,  but  he  was  no  more  addicted  to  this 
fault  than  other  public  men.  Undoubtedly,  he  made  use  at 
times  of  arguments  which  he  personally  thought  of  little 
force,  and  he  did  this  of  course  for  popular  effect  and  to 
win  votes;  but  where  is  the  successful  man  in  political 
life  or  in  the  professions  who  does  not  do  so?  He  and 
they  address  their  arguments  to  the  jury  they  have  to 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  467 

convince,  and  hosts  of  instances  could  be  adduced  in 
which  his  greatest  contemporaries  appealed  to  the  pas 
sions  and  prejudices  of  that  same  jury  with  arguments 
of  which  no  one  better  than  they  knew  the  unsoundness. 

Instances  more  or  less  in  point  in  Benton's  career  are 
to  be  found  in  his  votes  on  some  tariff  laws,  and  presum 
ably  some  of  his  actions  as  to  the  annexation  of  Texas 
were  largely  inspired  by  an  effort  to  meet  the  popular 
wish  in  Missouri  as  far  as  he  could.  Again  he  fully  justi 
fies  Van  Buren's  vote  in  favor  of  engrossing  the  Incen 
diary  Publications  Bill,  when  (as  Benton  thinks)  Cal- 
houn  had  purposely  made  a  tie  for  the  purpose  of  ruining 
Van  Buren  (then  Vice-President  and  a  candidate  for  the 
presidency)  by  forcing  him  to  give  the  casting  vote.  Ben- 
ton's  vote  was  cast  against  this  bill,  and  he  speaks  of  Van 
Buren's  affirmative  one  "  as  a  political  vote, — that  is  to 
say,  given  from  policy."  * 

It  seems  to  me  that  his  political  morality  was  of  a  high 
order.  If  in  the  bank  struggle  and  many  other  instances, 
where  the  game  of  politics  dictated  not  a  few  of  the  minor 
moves  on  both  sides,  he  did  his  share  of  mere  partisan 
ship,  this  book  has  been  written  in  vain  if  it  has  not  shown 
that,  particularly  when  the  winds  blew  hard,  he  would 
stick  to  the  wheel  till  the  final  crash  in  his  efforts  to  guide 
the  ship  of  state  in  that  path  in  which  he  thought  alone 
her  safety  was  to  be  found. 

How  easy  for  him  to  have  shirked  the  Oregon  ques 
tion  !  How  easy  to  have  avoided — and  at  that  very  same 
time — the  taking  of  so  prominent  a  place  in  the  disputes 
about  the  annexation  of  Texas  and  the  disposal  of  the 
territory  acquired  from  Mexico !  But  he  did  not  shirk  in 
these  cases,  which  he  thought  vital  to  our  existence,  but 
stepped  out  before  the  public — almost  solitary  and  alone 
among  the  people  of  his  State — and  announced  in  ad- 

*View,  i.,  p.  587. 


468       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

vance  what  he  thought  and  intended  to  do.  And  no  one 
can  dispute  that  he  adhered  to  the  end  to  the  views  so 
announced  in  advance. 

Dyer  says  of  him  that  he  had  grand  and  chivalrous 
ideas  as  to  public  duty  and  that  as  a  Senator  his  country 
was  his  only  client,  and  he  never  took  a  fee  for  prosecu 
ting  a  claim  against  her  nor  lent  his  influence  to  help  any 
one  get  into  her  treasury.  He  must  have  been  a  thorn 
in  the  side  of  those  members  who  are  forever  pressing 
jobs  having  some  visible  or  hidden  source  of  profit  to 
their  friends  or  constituents.  In  numerous  instances  he 
stopped  these  petty  thefts  and  evidently  enjoyed  laying 
them  bare. 

A  practice  was  then  growing  up  in  both  houses 
of  purchasing  books  and  other  publications  out  of  the 
contingent  fund  of  the  House  concerned  and  of  fur 
nishing  a  number  of  copies  to  each  member.  In  not 
a  few  cases,  too,  the  profit  of  the  publication  was 
in  one  way  or  another  to  find  its  way  into  the  pocket 
of  some  officer  or  employe  of  the  House  in  question, 
so  that,  as  Benton  said  in  one  instance,  "  upwards  of 
half  a  million  of  dollars  at  the  least,  and  possibly  a  mil 
lion  and  a  half,  was  to  be  given  to  an  officer  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  and  his  partner  for  printing  a  work 
to  be  given  to  those  who  voted  that  officer  and  his  part 
ner  the  money."  Members  of  Congress  appear  to  have 
given  themselves  the  "  Madison  Papers"  in  this  way,  and 
at  one  time  an  effort  was  made  to  present  ten  copies  of 
"  Niles's  Register"  to  each  member.  Items  for  such  ap 
propriations  were  silently  slipped  through  the  Senate, 
probably  at  a  time  when  few  were  present,  and  the  most 
regular  and  attentive  members  would  be  surprised  a  year 
later  to  learn  that  some  appropriation  involving  amounts 
varying  from  a  few  thousand  dollars  up  to  as  much  as 
half  a  million  or  more  had  been  voted — even  in  some  in 
stances  with  them  voting  in  the  affirmative.  The  works 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  469 

were  often  or  always  of  questionable  value,  and  in  one 
case  Benton  greatly  amused  the  Senate  by  exposing  the 
worthlessness  of  a  map  of  this  kind,  which  was  gotten  up 
with  splendid  colors  and  "  catchpenny  names"  to  attract 
the  eye. 

Benton  says  that  some  members — among  whom  he 
names  Calhoun,  King,  and  himself — were  "  so  utterly 
averse  to  the  practice  of  distribution  that  they  would  not 
touch  a  copy  of  the  works  to  be  distributed/'  and  he  was 
himself  in  the  habit  of  buying  any  such  book  when  he 
needed  it.  Others  were  less  scrupulous,  and  there  seems 
to  be  little  doubt  that  some  members  regularly  sold  in 
advance  their  right  to  all  such  publications  for  the  session 
for  as  little  as  ten  dollars. 

Time  and  again  Benton  opposed  these  schemes  of 
petty  pilfering,  often  successfully  and  sometimes  not;  one 
that  he  defeated  in  1849  was  pressed  by  Cameron  as  chair 
man  of  the  Committee  on  Printing,  and  in  his  very  last 
Senate,  in  1850,  he  stopped  one  that  was  strongly  urged 
by  Foote.  This  was  at  the  time  when  the  relations  of 
Foote  and  Benton  were  so  strained  by  their  frequent  col 
lisions,  and  was  after  the  scene  when  Foote  had  drawn 
a  pistol  on  Benton,  but  the  present  contest  was  carried  on 
in  the  main  within  the  rules  of  propriety.  Benton  evi 
dently  took  much  pleasure  in  nipping  the  scheme  in  the 
bud,  and  the  approaching  contest  was  heralded  in  the 
newspapers,  evidently  at  his  instigation,  as  the  "  Battle 
of  the  Books,"  after  Dean  Swift's  satire. 

The  plan  in  this  particular  case  was  to  publish  "  a 
comprehensive  view  of  the  principal  independent  maritime 
countries  of  the  East,"  the  facts  for  which  had  been  col 
lected  by  one  Palmer,  who  was  a  friend  of  Foote  and  lived 
at  the  same  boarding-house  with  him,  while  Benton  main 
tained  that  he  was  in  reality  a  promoter  and  had  been  a 
hanger-on  at  Congress  for  years.  After  quite  a  debate, 
in  which  Benton,  with  the  aid  of  some  others,  opposed  the 


470       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

plan  on  the  grounds  which  have  been  indicated,  of  the 
impropriety  of  the  whole  system,  the  motion  for  the  ap 
propriation  was  indefinitely  postponed  by  a  vote  of 
twenty-eight  to  thirteen.* 

The  lobbyists,  too,  who  were  already  at  that  time  be 
ginning  to  infest  the  halls  of  Congress  met  with  his  ear 
nest  hatred,  and  he  often  denounced  their  method  "  of 
dogging  members  to  and  fro,  meeting  them  at  every 
corner,  and  soliciting  their  votes."  On  one  occasion, 
when  walking  with  Wentworth,  some  one  bowed,  and 
Benton  said,  "  That  fellow  must  have  bowed  to  you;  do 
you  know  him?"  and  then  went  on,  "  He  belongs  to  a 
class  of  men  whom  I  never  recognize.  He  is  a  claim- 
agent,  a  professed  lobbyist,  and  they  are  all  great  liars. 
It  is  unsafe  to  be  alone  with  one  of  them;  for,  as  the 
world  goes,  when  two  men  are  alone  together,  one  man's 
word  is  as  good  as  another's  after  they  separate." 

His  son-in-law  has  told  me  another  story  of  his  treat 
ment  of  this  class  which  Benton  used  to  tell  with  a  good 
deal  of  zest.  Mr.  Jacob  gives  the  story  as  an  illustration 
of  the  fact  he  is  speaking  of  that,  though  kind  and  cour 
teous  to  his  friends,  Benton  would  be  "  rough  and  forcible 
at  times  to  those  who  thrust  upon  him  what  he  did  not 
like.  A  merchant  of  New  York  was  endeavoring  to 
obtain  from  Congress  a  subsidy  for  a  line  of  steamers  to 
Panama  or  some  other  foreign  port,  and  had  an  agent  in 
Washington  to  look  after  the  matter.  This  agent  met 
Benton  one  day  and  "  asked  him  why  he  could  not  aid 
them.  He  genially  replied,  '  I  might  upon  certain  con- 

*  See  on  this  subject  C.  D.,  vol.  xiii.,  1836-37,  pp.  725,  726,  1010; 
C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  202;  C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  pp. 
237,  238,  246-248;  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  376,  377;  C.  G.,  27th 
Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  466,  760;  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  292, 
530-532;  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  204-206;  John  Quincy 
Adams's  Diary,  xi.,  p.  534;  C  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  pp.  1203,  1204, 
1661-1666. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  471 

siderations.'  The  man  was  delighted,  and  answered, 

'  Name  your  conditions,  Senator ;  Mr. will  give  you 

almost  anything  you  ask/  '  Well,  the  conditions  are  that 
when  the  vessels  are  finished,  that  they  will  be  used  to 
take  all  such  d — d  rascals  as  you  are  out  of  the  country.' ' 

Benton  of  course  often  attended  caucuses  and  used 
them  as  a  means  of  securing  united  party  action,  but  he 
disliked  them  and  despised  those  who  were  party  men  "  in 
the  modern  sense  ...  as  never  bolting  a  caucus  nomina 
tion  and  never  thinking  differently  from  the  actual  admin 
istration."  The  National  Conventions  to  nominate  a 
President,  too,  he  never  became  reconciled  to,  thinking 
that  they  were  always  packed  with  "  mercenaries"  sent  in 
the  interest  of  some  particular  candidate,  and  often  per 
verted  from  the  best  results  by  the  two-thirds  rule;  and 
he  wrote  in  his  autobiography  that  he  never  attended 
either  one  of  them  or  a  Congress  caucus  to  nominate  a 
President.* 

Political  platforms  were  another  of  his  pet  detesta 
tions,  and  he  wrote  of  them  with  contempt  as  being  recon 
structed  every  four  years  by  "  the  little  political  carpen 
ters."  He  says  in  his  autobiography  that  "  he  admitted  no 
platform  of  political  principles  but  the  Constitution,  and 
viewed  as  impertinent  and  mischievous  the  attempt  to  ex 
tend  the  Constitution  periodically  in  a  set  of  hurrah  reso 
lutions,  juggled  through  the  fag-end  of  a  packed  conven 
tion  and  held  to  be  the  only  test  of  political  salvation 
during  its  brief  day  of  supremacy." 

Office-seeking,  too,  was  another  function  of  a  public 
man  very  distasteful  to  him.  Of  course,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  he  took  part  in  it  to  a  considerable  extent,  but 
he  wrote  in  his  autobiography  that  "  he  detested  office- 
seeking  and  office-hunting,  and  all  changes  in  politics  fol 
lowed  by  demand  for  office,"  and  on  another  occasion  he 

*  View,  ii.,  pp.  160,  188,  599. 


472       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

said  *  it  was  his  rule  always  to  tell  those  asking  to  have 
any  one  removed,  so  as  to  create  a  vacancy,  that  "  they 
must  show  misconduct."  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
this  was  exactly  his  opinion  and  was  a  fair  index  to  his 
actions. 

It  has  already  been  said  that  he  had  learned  from 
Macon  to  think  it  wrong  for  a  public  man  to  ask  office  for 
any  of  his  kin,  and  he  wrote  that  the  commission  in  the 
army  which  he  asked  from  Madison  in  1813  was  the  only 
favor  of  the  kind  he  ever  asked  of  any  President.  The 
only  cases  I  have  unearthed,  which  can  possibly  be 
thought  to  contradict  him  on  this  point  are  that  in  1830, 
as  appears  from  some  family  letters,  upon  the  death  of  a 
brother,  he  tried  to  secure,  but  probably  not  from  the 
President,  an  appointment  to  West  Point  for  a  son  of 
this  brother;  and  again  the  instance  which  appears  from 
Polk's  "  Diary,"  in  1847,  when  Benton  at  least  spoke  to 
the  President  about  an  appointment  for  his  son-in-law  as 
charge  d'affaires.  The  case  of  an  appointment  to  West 
Point  may,  in  my  opinion,  be  put  aside  as  nothing,  but  the 
other  one  does  seem  a  departure  from  his  principle. 

Certain  beliefs  which  he  had  acquired  during  his  long 
experience  of  legislation  are  deserving  of  mention,  and 
we  would  maybe  to-day  see  fewer  useless  or  harmful  laws 
on  the  statute-book,  if  some  of  them  were  more  borne  in 
mind.  He  was  not  at  all  one  of  those  who  think  that  the 
passing  of  "  a  law"  is  a  panacea  for  every  ill  that  may 
spring  up,  nor  did  he  believe  that  a  people  can  be  driven 
into  the  paths  of  virtue  by  this  means. 

In  the  "  View,"  f  he  tells  of  an  instance  in  point  which 
had  made  a  great  impression  on  him  in  his  early  years  in 
the  Tennessee  Senate  and  which  he  thinks  illustrates  the 

*  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  216-219.  His  statement  as 
to  his  commission  in  the  army  is  to  be  found  in  the  View,  ii., 
pp.  87,  679. 

fVol.  ii.,  p.  148. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  473 

truth  that  human  frailty,  if  suppressed  at  one  spot,  is  more 
than  likely  to  break  out  again  at  a  new  and  even  worse 
place.  On  some  occasion  a  moralist  and  worthy  member 
was  on  the  floor  taking  credit  to  himself  for  having  put 
down  billiard-tables  in  Nashville,  when  another  member 
asked  him  how  many  card-tables  he  had  put  up  in  their 
place.  As  Benton  writes,  this  was  a  side  of  the  account 
to  which  the  suppressor  of  billiard-tables  had  not  looked 
"  and  which  opened  up  a  view  of  serious  consideration  to 
every  person  intrusted  with  the  responsible  business  of 
legislation — a  business  requiring  so  much  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  and  so  seldom  invoking  the  little  we  pos 
sess."  He  goes  on  that  it  had  been  on  his  mind  ever 
since,  and  that  he  had  had  constant  occasion  to  witness 
its  disregard. 

Nor  was  it  only  the  crude  essays  of  moralists  at  legis 
lation  to  reform  mankind  that  he  thought  attained  little 
success.  It  has  been  said  that  he  was  an  opponent  of  the 
doctrines  of  protection,  and  probably  the  instinct  that  led 
him  against  this  effort  to  play  guardian  to  society  was  the 
same  as  that  which  impressed  him  in  the  Tennessee  Leg 
islature  and  found  further  expression  in  his  saying  once 
in  the  Senate,  "  Wonderful  are  the  workings  of  com 
merce,  and  more  apt  to  find  out  its  own  proper  channels 
by  its  own  operations  than  to  be  guided  into  them  by  the 
hand  of  legislation." 

He  urged,  too,  at  all  times  that  the  Federal  govern 
ment  should  get  out  of  business  operations.  His  repeal 
in  his  very  early  days  of  the  Indian  Factory  System  is  a 
case  in  point,  which  has  been  already  mentioned,  and  he 
always  opposed  the  government  ownership  of  the  Mis 
souri  salt  and  other  mines,  and  later  on  urged  individual 
ownership  of  the  California  gold-mines.  "  I  have  no 
idea/'  he  said  in  1848,  on  a  bill  to  grant  land  to  Flor 
ida  to  aid  in  the  draining  of  the  Everglades,  "  of  this 
Federal  government  making  money  by  any  operation  it 


474       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

engages  in.  I  do  not  think  it  can  make  money  by  any 
enterprise  it  undertakes.  It  ought  not  to  do  so,  if  it  could. 
The  resources  of  the  country  should  be  developed  by  oper 
ations  to  be  carried  on  by  individual  enterprise.  From 
these  the  Federal  government  will  derive  advantage  in 
the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the  people.  That  is 
the  only  way  in  which  it  ought  to  be  a  gainer."  * 

The  socialistic  tendencies,  as  he  thought  them,  as  ex 
emplified  in  the  Patent  Office's  collection  and  publishing 
of  tables  of  prices,  etc.,  and  in  their  purchase  and  distri 
bution  of  seeds,  led  him  once  to  say  in  the  Senate  that 
"  the  Federal  government  seemed  to  him  to  be  madly 
shooting  from  its  sphere:"  and  he  was  undoubtedly 
in  favor  of  an  economical  government  strictly  confined  to 
the  general  functions  indicated  by  the  Constitution.  In 
the  "  View,"  he  has  repeated  chapters  on  the  inordinate 
increase  in  expenses  in  various  branches  of  the  govern 
ment,  and  he  wanted  to  curtail  these;  but  he  had  little 
faith  in  sporadic  efforts  of  one  or  a  few  members  of  Con 
gress  to  force  economy  in  some  particular  direction,  and 
he  said  in  the  Senate  in  1850  that  Macon  had  early  told 
him  that  "  a  member  of  Congress  could  never  effect  any 
reform  in  what  concerned  a  department  unless  the  depart 
ment  or  the  administration  went  with  him.  I  have  found 
that  out,  and  have  seen  it  illustrated  for  thirty  years."  f 

He  wanted,  too,  to  curtail  the  fees  of  public  officers, 
as  soon  as  their  amount  became  large,  and  expressed  him 
self  as  opposed  to  "  the  whole  idea  of  making  fortunes 
out  of  public  service."  The  constant  tendency,  too,  to 
grant  further  pensions  for  Revolutionary  services  met  his 
opposition  on  more  than  one  occasion,  as,  for  instance,  in 


*  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  91 ;  C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  1st  Sess., 
appendix,  p.  1365.  The  quotation  as  to  the  workings  of  commerce 
is  to  be  found  in  View,  ii.,  p.  671. 

t  C.  G.,  3 ist  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  147. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  475 

1851,  when  he  opposed  their  extension  to  widows  whose 
marriage  had  occurred  after  the  Revolution.* 

Stale  claims  against  the  government  ever  met  his  dis 
approval,  and  he  repeatedly  opposed  in  particular  the 
French  Spoliation  Claims  and  expressed  great  pleasure 
when,  on  August  6,  1846,  Polk  told  him  he  intended  to 
veto  the  bill  passed  to  pay  them ;  and  there  is  some  rea 
son  to  suppose  that  he  aided  Polk  in  preparing  the  veto 
message.  He  thought  that  such  claims  should  be  con 
clusively  assumed  to  have  been  heard  and  passed  upon  at 
about  the  time  of  their  origin. 

"  It  was  a  just  principle/'  he  said,  "  that  they  who 
lived  at  the  time  and  were  cognizant  of  the  transaction, 
were  the  proper  persons  to  settle  the  case,"  and  he  always 
emphasized  the  hopeless  position  of  the  government  other 
wise,  owing  to  the  lack  of  personal  interest  on  its  side, 
while  claim  agents  kept  everything  alive  against  it.  "  I 
have  seen,"  he  said  in  1855,  "  those  French  claims,  while 
those  were  alive  who  understood  them,  faintly  presenting 
themselves  before  Congress  and  obtaining  references  to 
favorable  committees,  and  obtaining  favorable  reports 
upon  them,  without  being  able  to  make  the  least  impres 
sion  upon  that  body!  Without  being  able  for  a  whole 
generation  to  bring  them  to  the  dignity  of  a  vote.  Then, 
as  those  who  were  contemporary  with  the  events  began  to 
die  off  and  new  members  came  in  who  obtained  their 
knowledge  from  these  favorable  reports,  thus  got  from 
favorable  committees  selected  for  the  purpose,  ...  the 
claims  began  to  appear  formidable." 

He  urged,  too,  the  utter  impossibility  of  examining 
the  evidence  as  to  these  particular  claims,  and  emphasized 
the  vast  mass  of  matter  it  made  and  how  he  had  for  years 
been  unable  to  get  through  it ;  and  intimated  the  opinion 

*  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  218.  Ibid.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess., 
p.  42.  Ibid.,  3ist  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  334,  335. 


476       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

that  in  the  end  they  would  be  paid.  He  also  opposed  on 
similar  grounds  the  bill  introduced  in  1848  for  the  relief 
of  the  family  of  Paul  Jones;  and  upon  the  questions 
arising  after  California  became  ours,  he  urged  the  imme 
diate  creation  of  a  commission  to  settle  all  questions  as  to 
property  seized  by  General  Fremont,  which  should  go  out 
to  California  and  at  once,  while  the  evidence  was  fresh, 
hear  and  pass  on  all  claims;  only  in  this  way,  he  main 
tained,  could  both  the  claimants  and  the  United  States  be 
protected  and  California  be  prevented  from  becoming  "  a 
mine  for  the  production  of  false  claims  for  half  a  century 
to  come."  And  in  this  same  connection,  he  later  opposed 
the  plan  introduced  for  ascertaining  titles  in  the  new  pos 
sessions,  and  moved  a  substitute  of  his  own  (based  on 
his  experiences  in  Missouri),  a  main  object  of  which  was 
to  give  to  all  Spanish  grants  precisely  the  effect  the  Span 
ish  law  would  have  given  and  again  to  avoid  dragging 
litigants  to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.* 

But  there  is  one  instance  in  which  he  did  support  a 
stale  claim — that  of  the  claims  of  Massachusetts  growing 
out  of  the  War  of  1812.  These  had  been  persistently 
refused  payment,  and  Benton  himself  had  been  against 
them,  but  in  1830  he  supported  a  bill  for  the  payment  of 
about  one-half  their  amount,  announcing  that  he  had 
studied  the  evidence  and  become  convinced  of  their  jus 
tice.  There  is  the  material  distinction  in  this  case  that 
the  claim  was  on  behalf  of  a  governmental  agency  in  our 
system,  and  the  question  depended  mainly  on  evidence  of 
matters  of  history,  f 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  he  always  opposed  the 
insertion  of  the  word  "  assigns"  in  acts  for  governmental 

*  C  G.,  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  pp.  236,  237,  254-259.  Ibid.,  3ist 
Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  158. 

t  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  1829-30,  pp.  357-359-  Ibid.,  vol.  xi.,  1834-35,  p. 
19.  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  381,  382,  608.  Ibid.,  33d  Cong., 
2d  Sess.,  p.  122.  View,  i.,  pp.  487-521. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  477 

aid  to  those  who  had  served  it,  and  to  the  very  end  of 
his  career  he  would  make  long  struggles  for  the  amend 
ment  or  defeat  of  bills  recognizing  the  right  of  assign 
ment.  In  1849  he  announced  that  he  should  vote  against 
any  one  containing  the  word,  and  again  in  the  House  in 
1855  he  opposed  its  insertion,  and  pointed  out  that  the 
pending  bill  was  intended  as  a  stock- jobbing  device,  with 
the  word  "  assigns"  as  one  aid  in  that  direction  and  with 
five  of  what  he  called  "  creep-holes"  intended  to  allow 
the  chief  beneficiary  under  the  act  (which  contained  a 
land-grant  in  his  favor)  to  escape  any  real  liability  for 
return  services  to  the  government. 

It  was  in  this  same  connection,  too,  that  he  announced 
another  idea  he  held,  strongly  criticising  the  tendency  of 
courts  and  executive  officers  to  interpret  laws  in  a  way 
never  intended.  "  Every  person  knows,"  he  said,  "  that 
there  are  two  legislative  powers  in  every  country,  and  the 
last  is  the  most  important  one.  First,  there  is  the  legisla 
tive  power  proper,  which  passes  the  law ;  and  last,  there 
is  the  legislative  power  improper,  which  construes  the  act 
and  makes  it  either  wide  or  narrow,  according  to  their 
judgments  or  their  prejudices."  * 

Another  of  his  beliefs  was  that  almost  all  bills  which 
pass  unanimously  have  some  improper  motive  behind 
them.  He  said  he  had  been  told  by  older  members,  when 
he  came  to  the  Senate,  that  he  "  should  distrust  anything 
that  went  rapidly  and  unanimously ;  and  their  philosophi 
cal  reasoning  was  that  the  human  mind  was  so  various  in 
its  conclusions  that  if  any  case  was  fully  stated  and  pre 
sented  in  all  its  bearings,  there  would  be  difference  of 
opinion  in  regard  to  it,  and  that,  therefore,  when  a  case 
passed  rapidly  through  a  legislative  body  the  presumption 
was  that  it  had  not  been  fully  stated  and  attentively  exam- 

*  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  265 ;  C.  G.,  33d  Cong.,  2d  Sess., 
PP-  475,  996-998. 


478       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ined."  This  was  said  in  1848  in  regard  to  a  request  for 
unanimous  consent  to  a  bill  intended  to  be  hurried 
through  for  the  relief  of  the  heirs  of  Paul  Jones.* 

Benton  denied  the  constitutionality  of  bounties,  and 
seems  to  have  thought  the  Monroe  doctrine  much  more 
limited  in  scope  than  it  is  often  considered.  He  was 
warmly  opposed  to  the  plan  broached  in  1841  and  in  1850 
to  introduce  the  previous  question  into  the  Senate,  with 
a  view  to  limiting  debate,  and  in  the  former  instance  had 
apparently  made  up  his  mind  and  let  it  be  known  that  he 
should  oppose  such  an  effort  to  the  very  end.  On  this 
occasion,  he  said  that  "  Senators  have  a  constitutional 
right  to  speak ;  and  while  they  speak  to  the  subject  before 
the  House  there  is  no  power  anywhere  to  stop  them. 
When  a  member  departs  from  the  question,  he  is  to  be 
stopped ;  it  is  the  duty  of  the  chairman — your  duty,  Mr. 
President — to  stop  him,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Senate 
to  sustain  you  in  the  discharge  of  your  duty." 

This  was  during  the  days  of  Whig  ascendency,  but  I 
do  not  think  he  at  any  time  expressed  a  different  view.  It 
is  also  worthy  of  note  that  he  disapproved  of  the  great 
difference  of  length  between  the  long  and  short  sessions  of 
Congress,  and  thought  they  should  both  meet  and  adjourn 
sooner,  but  I  judge  that  a  main  inducement  to  this  opin 
ion  was  that  he  had  on  the  way  from  St.  Louis  to  Wash 
ington  "  been  more  than  once  frozen  up  on  the  Ohio 
River,  and  compelled  to  prosecute  his  journey  by  land 
over  by-roads  and  in  neighborhood  conveyances."  f 

He  was  very  fond  of  referring  in  a  sententious  way  to 
the  origin  of  the  word  democracy,  specifying  the  two 
Greek  words  demos  and  krateo  from  which  it  is  derived, 
and  in  some  speech  told  his  audience  of  his  strong  love  for 

*  C.  G.,  30th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  381. 

fView,  i.,  p.  67;  ii.,  p.  197.  C.  G.,  27th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  204. 
Ibid.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  762.  Ibid.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p. 
250. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  479 

those  two  words :  and  despite  the  fact  that  his  own  style 
of  speaking  and  of  writing  was  pedantic  and  involved  and 
not  in  good  taste,  he  had  his  own  ideas  upon  the  matter, 
was  offended  in  his  early  years  by  some  solecism  falling 
from  Jackson  when  on  the  bench  in  Tennessee,  and  later 
in  a  speech  in  Congress,  when,  referring  to  certain  things 
as  having  taken  place,  he  turned  to  the  reporters  and  said, 
"  Mind  you,  reporters,  took  place — don't  say  transpired, 
or  I  shall  certainly  expire." 

Other  beliefs  of  his  as  to  legislative  methods  find  to 
day  but  very  few  supporters.  Thus,  he  always  opposed 
the  system  of  "  pairing  off,"  and  maintained  that  it  was 
unauthorized  and  merely  used  as  a  means  of  allowing 
members  to  shirk  their  duty.  He  says  in  the  "  View" 
that  he  never  saw  an  instance  of  it  during  his  thirty  years 
in  the  Senate,  but  that  it  had  since  crept  in  there  from  the 
House ;  he  was,  however,  not  entirely  correct  in  this,  for 
I  have  come  across  two  instances  on  one  vote  in  the  Sen 
ate  in  1850,  and  John  Quincy  Adams  says  there  was  one 
instance  in  the  Senate  in  1829.  Adams  was  also  strongly 
opposed  to  the  practice  and  introduced  resolutions  against 
it  in  the  House  in  1840.* 

Benton  also  held  to  the  view,  which  was  supported  by 
numbers  of  public  men,  that  the  sitting  of  a  committee 
after  the  adjournment  of  Congress  was  without  au 
thority  under  the  Constitution.  And  to  the  end  of  his 
career,  as  has  already  been  said,  he  insisted  that  the 
powers  of  Congress  terminate  at  midnight  of  March  3 
of  the  uneven  years  and  that  it  should  therefore  adjourn 
sine  die  at  that  time.  This  subject  was  more  than  once 
discussed  in  his  day,  and  as  late  as  March,  1849,  several 
members  took  his  view  and  refused  to  vote  or  take  any 
part  in  the  proceedings;  but  the  system  was  too  con- 


*  View,  ii.,  p.  178;    C.  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  p.  1589;    J.  Q. 
Adams's  Diary,  viii.,  p.  109;    x.,  p.  241. 


480       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

venient  to  be  dropped,  and  by  the  end  of  his  career  few 
would  go  with  him  in  opposing  it.  When,  therefore,  in 
the  House,  in  the  early  hours  of  March  4,  1855,  he  ap 
peared  in  the  door  fronting  the  Speaker's  chair  and  in 
sisted  that  he  should  not  be  counted  as  present,  for  he 
was  no  longer  a  member  of  Congress,  and  added  that  he 
should  sue  any  man  who  called  his  name,  he  was  merely 
laughed  at  in  derision,  when  the  Speaker  replied  that,  if 
the  gentleman  from  Missouri  was  not  a  member  of  the 
House,  "  the  doorkeeper  will  keep  him  outside  the 
Hall."  * 

If  any  of  these  opinions  seem  a  little  extravagant  to 
some  to-day  we  must  remember  that  the  seeds  of  his  po 
litical  creed  ran  back  to  an  early  date,  and  he  was  not  the 
man  to  give  up  a  point  readily. 

One  lesson  in  the  tendencies  of  his  time  and  their  con 
trast  to  those  now  prevailing  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  Benton,  though  beyond  peradventure  a  man  of  the 
broadest  ideas  and  always  anxious  to  advance  the  national 
greatness  of  the  United  States,  was  yet  a  strict  construc- 
tionist  of  the  Constitution.  Time  and  again  he  would 
"examine  at  length  and  with  care  the  question  of  consti 
tutional  power,  and  I  do  not  think  his  desire  to  attain  any 
special  object  would  bias  or  color  his  views  to  a  greater 
extent  than  is  unavoidably  incident  to  the  frailty  of  hu 
man  nature. 

Doubtless,  his  views  on  these  questions  were  modified 
by  the  growth  of  events  and  the  constant  spread  of  federal 
power,  but  I  do  not  know  of  any  direct  instance  in  point. 
It  is  a  lesson  of  history  that  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
this  tendency  was  instilled  into  so  many  of  our  statesmen 
preceding  the  Civil  War,  and  people  of  to-day  who  affect 
to  contemn  those  who  raise  constitutional  questions,  be- 


*View,  i.,  pp.  471,  596,  599;    ii.,  p.  732;    C  G.,  33d  Cong.,  2d 
Sess.,  p.  1190. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  481 

i  cause  of  their  narrowness,  should  take  it  to  heart  that  a 
j  man  as  broad  as  Benton  was  ever  scrupulous  not  to  vio- 
jlate  that  chart,  one  of  the  chief  purposes  of  which  is  to 
!  protect  a  dissenting  minority. 

Benton  was  one  of  those  who  would  not  hesitate  a 
moment  to  face  war  in  what  he  thought  a  proper  case,  and 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  he  had  much  real  sympathy 
with  arbitration  of  international  disputes.  He  did  recog 
nize  it  as  an  entirely  proper  mode  in  minor  questions  but 
he  said  in  his  speech  on  Oregon,  when  approving  of 
Folk's  refusal  to  submit  that  question  to  an  arbitrator: 
"  The  interest  at  stake  is  too  large  for  that  species  of  set 
tlement.  Territorial  rights  to  a  country  large  enough  for 
a  great  kingdom  is  not  a  subject  for  individual  arbitra 
ment,  whether  of  crowned  heads  or  of  citizens  or  subjects. 
Small  things  may  be  referred.  Things  not  worth  a  con 
test  may  be  referred.  But  an  empire  of  territory,  with 
great  rivers  and  harbors ;  contiguous  to  and  indispensable 
to  one  of  the  parties,  holding  a  claim  for  fifty  years, 
which  it  feels  to  be  valid,  is  not  a  matter  for  arbitration. 
No  such  imperial  territory  ever  was  submitted  to  arbitra 
tion,  and  in  all  probability  never  will  be."  * 

On  the  other  hand,  he  thought  that  under  our  system 
there  is  ample  machinery  provided  for  the  peaceful  settle 
ment  of  all  disputes  between  the  States:  and,  when  the 
governor  of  Missouri  was  raising  troops  to  march  against 
Iowa  and  settle  by  force  a  dispute  as  to  boundaries,  the 
Missouri  delegation  in  Congress  addressed  a  private  letter 
to  the  governor  to  say  that  they  could  not  support  him  in 
such  a  movement  and  advising  the  commencement  of 
judicial  proceedings.  This  fact  was  not  generally  known 
until  Benton  told  of  it  some  years  afterwards  in  Con 
gress^  and  I  think  it  may  be  assumed  that  he  was  a  lead- 

*  C.  G.,  29th  Cong.,  ist  Se 
f  Ibid.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sese 


482       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

ing  instigator  of  the  letter  in  question.  As  he  said,  the 
consequence  was  that  "  Missouri  lost  the  land,  but  gained 
the  honor  of  submitting  to  the  laws  of  the  land." 

In  accordance  with  these  general  views,  he  seems 
always  to  have  favored  a  considerable  degree  of  military 
preparedness,  and  as  chairman  of  the  Military  Committee 
he  had  of  course  a  great  deal  of  power  in  this  connection. 
I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  his  general  views  upon  the 
subject  were  fairly  summed  up,  when  he  said  in  1840, 
in  view  of  the  supposed  British  preparations  along  our 
northeastern  frontier  and  in  Bermuda,  "  The  armor  of 
defence  is  what  the  nation  should  wear.  If  we  wish  to 
preserve  peace,  we  must  show  a  will  to  resist  aggression. 
The  nation  which  refuses  to  defend  itself  invites  aggres 
sion." 

Accordingly,  he  reproached  the  Senate  in  1836  for 
having  delayed  appropriations  for  national  defence  at  the 
prior  session,  when  war  was  threatening  with  France,  and 
in  1840  he  favored  the  building  of  a  dry-dock  at  Pensa- 
cola  and  insisted  that  we  must  have  a  strong  naval  station 
on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  so  as  to  defend  that  mare  nos 
trum.  He  evidently  watched  with  interest  our  naval 
service;  but  that  branch  interested  him  less  than  the 
army,  and  late  in  life  he  expressed  the  opinion  that  the 
cruising  system  was  alone  suitable  to  us.  He  also  favored 
bills  for  the  fortification  of  our  coasts  in  1835,  1838,  and 
1839;  but  it  was  chiefly  in  regard  to  the  army  that  his 
views  came  into  evidence. 

He  was  undoubtedly  of  opinion  that  our  main  reliance 
should  be  placed  upon  a  "  citizen  soldiery,"  to  be  called 
for  as  need  arose,  but  at  the  same  time  he  believed  in 
maintaining  as  the  nucleus  of  an  army  a  body  of  men 
enlisted  for  some  period,  and  in  numerous  instances 
wanted  to  raise  the  number  authorized  by  existing  laws. 
Thus  in  1830  he  advocated  a  bill  for  mounted  infantry 
to  protect  our  trading  caravans;  in  1836  he  wanted  to 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  483 

authorize  the  President  to  accept  the  services  of  volun 
teers  to  defend  the  frontier,  and  at  about  this  same  time 
he  was  pressing  a  bill  for  an  increase  from  six  thousand 
to  ten  thousand,  which  only  barely  became  a  law  in  1838, 
after  having  been — according  to  Benton  and  to  his  great 
wrath — long  delayed  by  the  bills  for  depositing  the  sur 
plus  with  the  States. 

He  was  generally  inclined  to  support  bills  for  volun 
teers,  rather  than  for  the  increase  of  the  regular  army, 
but  he  favored  enlistment  for  several  years.  At  least 
one  of  his  bills  provided  for  the  election  of  the  company 
officers  by  the  men,  and  he  was  at  all  times  opposed  to  the 
system  of  officers  coming  exclusively  from  West  Point, 
and  maintained  that  it  was  a  serious  error,  particularly  in 
a  democratic  country,  thus  to  take  away  from  the  man  in 
the  ranks  the  immense  incentive  of  feeling  that  he  carried 
a  possible  marshal's  baton  in  his  knapsack.  That  the  sys 
tem  has  on  the  whole  produced  good  results  is  sufficient 
answer  to  this  objection  to  many,  but  it  must  be  recog 
nized  as  anomalous  and  as  an  illustration  of  the  truth 
that  a  system  theoretically  wrong  may  at  times  work 
well. 

In  Benton's  day,  however,  the  average  success  was  not 
yet  by  any  means  so  clearly  established  and  there  was  no 
little  opposition  to  it.  This  is  another  instance  where 
Macon  seems  to  have  influenced  Benton's  views,  and  to 
the  end  of  his  career  the  latter  never  became  reconciled 
to  the  West  Point  system  and,  despite  his  interest  in  mili 
tary  affairs  and  suggestions  that  he  should  be  one  of  the 
annual  visitors,  he  never  once  even  saw  the  Military 
Academy.* 

*View,  i.,  pp.  182,  186,  638;  ii.,  p.  148.  C.  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist 
Sess.,  pp.  297,  522.  C.  D.,  vol.  xii.,  1835-36,  pp.  106,  592,  1388,  1744. 
C  G.,  25th  Cong.,  3d  Sess.,  p.  238.  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.  (1829-30),  p.  272. 
C.  G.,  25th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  88.  Ibid.,  33d  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  appen 
dix,  pp.  334-341. 


484       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

He  was  by  no  means  one  of  those  who  think  that 
the  propertied  classes  are  always  right:  and  when,  in 
1840,  on  one  of  his  bills  for  the  repeal  of  the  salt  tax, 
some  of  his  friends  were  criticised  for  "  the  disorgan 
izing  and  revolutionary  tendencies  of  their  remarks,"  he 
replied  that 

"  he  was  sorry  to  hear  the  old  monarchical  cry  against  attacks  on 
property.  It  was  an  old  cry,  beginning  with  the  origin  of  monopo 
lies  and  continued  down  to  the  present  day.  There  were  but  two 
parties  in  politics,  and  never  had  been,  and  never  would  be.  They 
had  existed  always,  and  might  be  seen  in  the  Bible — in  first  Samuel 
— as  well  as  in  all  profane  history.  One  of  these  parties,  after  get 
ting  undue  advantages,  formerly  by  force,  now  by  corporations  and 
monopolies,  always  raise  the  cry  of  attacks  on  property  when  any 
of  their  undue  acquisitions  were  in  danger.  This  old  cry  had  long 
been  worn  out.  .  .  .  He  scouted  the  charge  of  attack  upon  property 
as  being  equally  stale  and  unfounded,  and  said  that  no  false  issues 
should  go  from  the  chamber.  The  attack  was  upon  an  odious,  in 
famous,  and  diabolical  monopoly."  * 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  in  regard  to  the  rare 
quality  of  courage,  Benton  stood  in  a  class  in  which  few 
human  beings  can  be  counted,  and  Senator  Vest  is  prob 
ably  right  in  saying  that  his  courage,  morally  and  physi 
cally,  was  equal  to  that  of  any  man  who  ever  lived  upon 
this  earth.  If  he  knew  fear,  it  is  at  least  difficult  to  see 
where  it  influenced  him,  and  in  all  ordinary  cases  he  was 
not  only  one  of  those  men — of  whom  there  are  a  fair 
number — who  take  delight  in  the  clash  of  conflict;  but 
his  courage  went  far  ahead  of  these  and  reached  its  high 
est  and  most  aggressive  form  when  he  was  in  a  hopeless 
minority  and  waging  a  losing  war  for  years  against  the 
overwhelming  sweep  of  forces  against  which  any  one  man 
is  as  powerless  as  is  one  ant  to  hold  back  the  waters  of 
Niagara  Falls. 

In  all  circumstances  his  courage  seems  to  have  held 

*  C  G.,  26th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  179. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  485 

proof.  Whether  in  the  long-drawn-out  struggle  of  his 
latter  years  against  the  tendency  in  his  own  State,  as  in 
other  slave  States,  to  gravitate  towards  disunion  in  the 
effort  to  save  their  existing  social  system,  or  in  some  con 
flict  in  the  Senate  where  all  his  opponents  and  many  of 
his  friends  would  think  him  utterly  wrong  arid  guilty  of 
abandoning  what  he  had  supported  for  half  a  lifetime; 
or  when  his  life  was  in  imminent  peril;  or  in  personal 
encounters  of  any  kind  with  an  opponent  he  seems  never 
to  have  hesitated  or  to  have  thought  of  consequences  to 
himself,  but  to  have  gone  on  in  the  course  he  thought 
right  and — to  use  a  phrase  he  often  repeated  from  Jackson 
— leave  the  consequences  to  God  and  the  country. 

In  his  legislative  career  it  has  been  shown  how  very 
often  he  exhibited  these  qualities,  and  it  is  to  be  observed 
that  his  action  in  such  matters  was  to  him  but  the  natural 
and  necessary  course,  and  he  never  either  assumed  that 
he  was  doing  a  virtuous  thing  nor  does  it  anywhere  ap 
pear  that  he  was  for  a  moment  appalled  by  what  lay  ahead 
of  him.  How  different  in  this  from  John  Quincy  Adams, 
whose  courage  was  indeed  high,  when  screwed  to  the 
sticking-place,  but  who  repeatedly  had  positive  night- 
sweats  of  terror  over  what  lay  ahead  of  him  and  con 
stantly  took  virtue  to  himself  for  his  course,  dilating,  for 
instance,  at  some  length  on  the  suicidal  policy  he  was  pur 
suing  in  1835  over  some  petty  boundary  contest  between 
two  States  as  far  off  from  his  own  as  were  Michigan  and 
Ohio.*  Benton  would  have  disposed  of  such  a  matter 
without  once  quailing  or  noting  the  fact. 

In  one  of  his  speeches  on  Oregon,  Benton  used  words 
which  probably  summed  up  pretty  well  his  ideas  upon  the 
course  to  pursue  under  difficulties.  "  Neither  nations  nor 
individuals,"  he  said,  "  ever  escaped  danger  by  fearing  it. 
They  must  face  it  and  defy  it."  His  life  has  certainly 

*  Diary,   ix.,  pp.  222,  223,  and  passim  thereabouts. 


486       LIFE   OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

shown  that  he  acted  up  to  this  doctrine  in  a  conspicuous 
degree  in  many  instances  of  great  public  import,  and  the 
same  was  equally  the  case  in  those  many  instances,  which 
an  active  public  career  furnishes,  of  clashes  of  one  kind  or 
another  with  those  who  differed  with  him.  Any  number 
of  cases  could  be  brought  forward  where,  on  differences 
with  other  Senators  becoming  warm  and  excited,  he 
would  attack  his  opponent  with  a  fierceness  which  almost 
always  led  to  his  final  triumph. 

And  so  persistent  was  he  in  such  contests,  when  they 
did  not  at  once  end  in  an  irreconcilable  clash,  that  he  would 
generally  in  the  end  force  from  his  opponent  some  state 
ment  or  admission  which  largely  justified  his  own  course. 
Thus  in  one  case  he  had  a  long  wrangle  with  Rives  in 
regard  to  language  used  by  the  latter  in  secret  session  in 
the  discussion  of  certain  maps  which  were  shown  during 
the  debate  over  the  Ashburton  treaty.  The  point  was 
that  Rives  had  apparently  charged  Benton  with  purposely 
failing  to  see  certain  lines  on  a  map,  while  Rives  main 
tained  that  he  had  made  no  such  charge,  and  that  the  real 
point  at  issue  between  them  was  as  to  the  purpose  with 
which  Benton  had  introduced  the  map  in  question.  The 
discussion  went  off,  as  such  disputes  are  likely  to  do,  into 
a  confused  wrangle  over  a  very  small  and  intangible  dif 
ference;  but  Benton  stuck  to  his  point  with  the  tenacity 
of  a  bull-dog,  bringing  the  discussion  up  on  three  separate 
days  and  repeatedly  reiterating  in  almost  identical  words 
the  dishonorable  perversion  of  palpable  truth  which  he 
insisted  Rives  had  charged  against  him,  with  the  result 
that  at  length  Rives  said  something  explanatory  which 
Benton  was  able  to  accept  as  satisfactory  and  as  justifying 
his  contention. 

Dyer  says  that  once,  on  the  occasion  of  some  personal 
wrangle  with  a  member,  the  opposing  Senator  referred  to 
what  he  called  a  "  quarrel"  of  Benton's ;  but  the  latter 
replied  sternly,  "The  Senator  is  mistaken,  sir.  I  never 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  487 

quarrel,  sir;  but  I  sometimes  fight,  sir;  and,  whenever 
I  fight,  sir,  a  funeral  follows,  sir."  This  statement  was 
fairly  true  as  to  his  early  years,  but  it  is  evident  that  as 
he  grew  older  he  sought  to  avoid  duels,  if  he  had  not 
even  made  up  his  mind  positively  to  decline  them.  Still, 
he  probably  had  his  doubts  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  grow 
ing  sentiment  against  duelling,  and  wrote  in  the  "  View" 
with  some  bitterness  as  to  the  frequency  with  which  under 
the  new  custom  one  man  would  go  armed  and  in  effect 
murder  a  person  with  whom  he  had  a  quarrel.  Doubtless, 
he  thought  the  "  code"  often  grossly  abused,  but  down  to 
his  late  life  he  had  the  greatest  admiration  for  a  "  high- 
toned  duel,"  and  wrote  in  the  "  View"  with  evident  gusto 
of  the  Clay-Randolph  meeting  in  1826  as  the  last  one  of 
the  kind  he  had  seen. 

All  agree  that  he  was  a  terrible  man  in  anger,  but, 
while  some  say  that  on  such  occasions  he  grew  almost 
beside  himself  and  became  the  helpless  victim  of  his  fury, 
both  Wentworth  and  Dyer  think  that  the  higher  his  anger 
the  cooler  he  was  and  that  he  never  lost  his  self-posses 
sion.  The  latter  says  that,  when  he  wanted  to  torture  an 
opponent,  he  had  a  way  of  elevating  his  voice  into  a  rasp 
ing  squeal  of  sarcasm,  which  was  intolerably  exasper 
ating.  He  had  on  such  occasions  a  most  effective  way  of 
repeating  a  sentence  over  and  over  with  slight  variations, 
hurling  the  word  sir  at  his  opponent  with  a  frequency 
which  nothing  but  his  powerful  utterance  and  command 
ing  manner  prevented  from  becoming  absurd. 

In  the  debate  on  the  petition  from  the  people  of  New 
Mexico  against  the  introduction  of  slavery  among  them, 
Senator  Westcott  read  parts  of  the  petition,  but  probably 
by  accident  omitted  certain  important  words.  When  he 
closed,  Benton  arose  and  said  imperiously,  "  Will  you 
hand  me  that  petition,  sir?"  Westcott  was  taken  by  sur 
prise  and  immediately  complied,  whereupon  Benton  said, 
with  the  utmost  severity.  "  Mr.  President,  sir,  I  wish  to 


488       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

read  the  words  that  the  Senator  from  Florida  has  left  out. 
He  read  it  twice,  sir,  as  a  petition  from  the  people  of  New 
Mexico.  He  read  it  twice,  sir,  as  relating  to  the  people  of 
New  Mexico,  and  he  read,  sir,  '  the  people  of  New  Mex 
ico'  twice  [laughter],  twice,  sir,  and  by  reading  it  twice 
he  thought  himself  entitled  to  leave  out  the  few  following 
words."  * 

Dyer,  who  very  likely  heard  or  reported  this  scene, 
says  that  "  Benton  hurled  '  the  people  of  New  Mexico 
twice,  sir,'  like  a  missile  at  the  opponents  of  the  petition. 
On  every  repetition  of  the  word  '  twice,'  his  voice  struck 
a  higher  key  and  rang  out  with  increased  power,  his 
mighty  arm  swept  through  the  air  with  majestic  gesticu 
lation,  his  eyes  blazed,  his  massive  form  dilated  and  tow 
ered  with  indignation." 

Not  infrequently  in  these  personal  wrangles  he  was 
very  disorderly,  as  one  instance  will  suffice  to  show.  He 
had  been  greatly  outraged  when,  soon  after  Folk's  acces 
sion  to  office,  Blair  was  displaced  as  editor  of  the  adminis 
tration  organ  and  in  effect  compelled  to  sell  out  his  plant 
at  an  almost  nominal  price  to  his  successor  Ritchie :  and 
he  always  maintained  f  that  this  had  been  the  price  of  a 
bargain  by  which  Polk  secured  through  Calhoun's  aid  the 
vote  of  South  Carolina.  Benton  was  indignant  over  this, 
and  probably  thought  the  object  to  be  the  further  perse 
cution  of  Blair,  when  an  effort  was  made  in  1847  t°  stl^" 
stitute  him  and  Rives  by  one  Houston  as  the  publisher  of 
the  "  Congressional  Debates." 

The  consequence  was  that  he  met  this  proposition  with 
bitter  wrath  during  parts  of  four  days'  sessions  and  per 
sisted  in  dilatory  tactics,  until  his  opponents  succeeded  in 
carrying  the  motion,  and  then  he  made  a  motion  to  re- 


*  Dyer  speaks  of  this  instance,  which  is  to  be  found  in  C.  G., 
30th  Cong.,  2d  Sess.,  p.  34. 
f  View,  ii.,  pp.  650-655. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  489 

scind  the  resolution  so  passed.  He  was  undoubtedly  in 
this  struggle  often  out  of  order  and  quarrelled  with  some 
of  his  friends,  telling  Hannegan,  for  instance,  that  his 
conduct  had  "  put  an  everlasting  barrier  between  him 
and  me  politically."  In  this  particular  case,  as  did  not 
often  happen,  Benton  was  a  good  deal  laughed  at,  and 
Hannegan  intimated,  to  the  great  amusement  of  the  Sen 
ate,  that,  though  he  had  never — unless  on  the  night  suc 
ceeding  the  passage  of  the  expunging  resolution — seen 
the  Senator  from  Missouri  drunk,  yet  he  thought  after 
the  day's  occurrences  that  "  Jackson  was  right  when  he 
said  that  the  Senator  from  Missouri  was  very  seriously 
injured  by  the  bursting  of  the  big  gun  on  the  '  Princeton,' 
which  blew  his  brains  out." 

The  reference  was  to  a  statement  Jackson  was  said 
to  have  made  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  as  the  explanation  of 
Benton's  opposition  to  the  annexation  of  Texas.  But, 
however  disorderly  Benton  may  have  been  and  however 
much  laughed  at,  he  carried  his  point,  and  Houston  did 
not  secure  the  contract  for  publishing  the  "  Debates." 
Blair  and  Rives  held  it  for  the  whole  of  another  Congress, 
and  then  it  was  awarded  to  Rives  alone. 

In  such  cases,  he  was  at  times  so  unreasonably  violent 
and  so  given  to  treating  with  scorn  some  position  of  an 
opponent  that  was  in  the  main  correct,  that  a  skilful  op 
ponent  would  show  his  error  or  even  in  a  few  instances 
successfully  rebuke  him  for  his  unpardonable  violence. 
Thus,  Walker  once  replied  with  considerable  severity  to 
Benton,  who  had  (so  Walker  maintained),  "  like  a  thun 
derbolt  from  an  unbroken  sky,  broken  upon  the  Senate 
in  a  perfect  tempest  of  wrath  and  fury,  bursting  upon  his 
poor  head  like  a  tropical  tornado."  Walker  suggested  his 
willingness  to  continue  the  controversy  "  in  all  its  conse 
quences,  in  and  out  of  this  House :"  but  Benton,  who  re 
produces  Walker's  speech  in  the  "Thirty  Years'  View," 
says  he  made  no  reply,  because  he  believed  the  events  of 


490       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART    BENTON 

a  few  months  would  fully  justify  his  position  on  the  point 
in  controversy. 

At  times  these  clashes  in  debate  could,  however,  be 
conducted  in  good  humor,  as  notably  in  an  instance  with 
Webster,  when  the  latter  complained  that  Benton  had 
"  boiled  over  as  tempestuous  as  Etna  or  Stromboli,  with 
smoke,  heat,  and  lava/'  and  Benton  said  in  reply,  "  The 
Senator  from  Massachusetts  complains  of  fire  and  rocks, 
of  burning  mountains  and  rivers  of  lava;  and  seems  to 
think  that  I  have  hurled  all  these  things  upon  his  head. 
Far  be  it  from  my  intention  to  use  him  so  cruelly.  I  only 
undertook  to  learn  the  future  conduct  of  the  Bank  of  the 
United  States  from  his  present  conduct  here  to-day ;  and 
if,  in  doing  this,  I  have  been  writing  on  his  naked  skin 
with  the  point  of  a  red-hot  iron,  it  may  have  been  the 
innocent  cause  of  all  these  confused  sensations  about  these 
fiery  eruptions,  heaving  mountains,  flowing  rivers,  and 
falling  rocks,  which  have  led  the  gentleman  to  believe 
that  he  was  standing  under  the  showers  of  one  of  those 
volcanic  mountains  which  bury  a  city  in  a  moment.  The 
remedy  is  to  cover  the  head  and  fly.  .  .  .  Let  him  cover 
his  with  a  document,  and  he  will  come  out  safe."  Several 
further  like  interchanges  followed,  all  in  good  humor, 
despite  the  fact  that  the  two  men  were  generally  on  ill 
terms. 

Benton's  fierce  onslaughts  in  more  than  one  instance 
on  spectators  in  the  galleries  who  expressed  their  senti 
ments  too  boisterously  seem  to  have  been  on  the  whole 
successful  in  accomplishing  the  purpose  he  had  in  view, 
but  they  had  their  evil  side.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
he  opposed  the  enforcement  of  the  rule  in  such  cases  for 
clearing  the  galleries  in  general  and  insisted  that  the 
actual  offenders  alone  should  instead  be  arrested,  and  this 
undoubtedly  resulted  in  preventing  the  ready  repetition  of 
such  disorder ;  but  it  was  said  that  the  Senate  was  in  1837 
in  no  little  embarrassment  what  to  do  with  the  man  ar- 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  491 

rested  for  disorder  at  the  passage  of  the  expunging  resolu 
tion,  and  it  seems  that  this  individual  declined  in  reality 
to  purge  himself  of  contempt,  and,  when  the  Senate  none 
the  less  voted  to  discharge  him,  he  asked  to  be  heard  in 
his  own  defence,  and  a  very  undesirable  scene  was  only 
avoided  by  his  being  hastily  hustled  out  of  the  chamber.* 

Men  so  insistent  as  Benton  was  in  the  maintenance 
of  his  views  of  policy  have  an  enormous  influence  in 
affairs  and  make  a  great  mark  on  the  course  of  legislation. 
The  reader  has  seen  this  in  many  cases;  and  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  Polk  wrote  in  his  "  Diary,"  in  regard  to 
the  conference  of  himself  and  Buchanan  with  Benton  as 
to  the  declaration  of  war  against  Mexico,  that  after  some 
little  argument  he  had  himself  abandoned  the  discussion, 
because  he  saw  that  "  it  was  useless  to  debate  the  subject 
further  with  him." 

Again,  when  in  reality  very  anxious  to  stop  Benton 
from  publishing  his  Oregon  letter,  Polk  wrote  that 
"  knowing  his  domineering  disposition  and  utter  impa 
tience  of  contradiction  or  difference  of  opinion,"  he 
merely  stated  his  objections.  And  in  the  same  direction 
is  another  note  of  this  diarist  that  after  Benton  had  been 
shown  in  advance  an  annual  message  and  had  objected  to 
certain  parts  of  it,  all  the  Cabinet  "agreed  that  it  was 
inexpedient  to  retain  the  passage — if  for  no  other  reason 
that,  if  they  were  opposed  by  Colonel  Benton,  they  would 
not  probably  pass  Congress." 

With  all  these  traits  belonging  to  him,  he  must  often 
have  been  a  very  hard  man  to  get  on  with  in  public  affairs, 
and  it  is  not  impossible  that  some  knowledge  of  this  on 
his  own  part  was  the  cause  that  led  him  to  decline  Van 
Buren's  offer  of  a  Cabinet  position.  At  the  same  time 
there  are  numerous  instances  in  which  he  did  get  on  to  all 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  xiii.,  p.  506.  C.  G.,  2;th  Cong.,  ist  Sess..  pp. 
338,  339- 


492       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

appearance  easily  with  others  as  insistent  as  himself,  and 
he  occupied  for  years  committee  positions  in  the  Senate 
which  must  have  kept  him  constantly  in  close  touch  with 
many  others. 

But  during  his  career  he  had  many  a  falling  out  with 
members  of  the  Senate  and  other  public  men  with  whom 
he  had  to  act,  and  there  would  then  follow  a  breach  of  all 
relations  which  Benton  was  probably  not  quick  to  make 
up.  Though  he  had  been  for  a  time  close  to  Polk,  yet 
the  latter  notes  that  after  the  Fremont  court-martial  Ben- 
ton  ceased  bowing  to  him,  and  they  had  no  relations  what 
soever  for  at  least  a  year.  They  seem  to  have  often  met 
at  church,  and  Polk  of  course  thinks  the  breach  was  made 
by  Benton,  and  doubtless  this  was  at  least  a  half  accurate 
judgment. 

Colonel  Switzler  writes  me  that  he  carried  his  rage  so 
far  that  when  David  H.  Armstrong  was  postmaster  at  St. 
Louis  under  Pierce,  Benton  in  a  pique  discontinued  all 
relations  with  him  and  declared  he  would  neither  send  nor 
receive  any  mail  matter  that  could  possibly  be  handled  by 
Armstrong.  And  he  carried  out  his  purpose,  resorting  to 
the  inconvenient  substitute  of  express  companies  for  the 
mails.  Wentworth  says,  too,  that  he  was  apt  to  be  boast 
ful  in  victory,  and  while  undaunted,  quite  morose  under 
defeat. 

With  his  colleagues  in  the  Senate  from  Missouri,  too, 
he  was  apparently  generally  on  bad  terms.  Barton  had 
doubtless  helped  him  to  reach  the  Senate,  and  seems  to 
have  looked  upon  it  as  a  case  of  black  ingratitude  when 
Benton,  partly  through  his  advocacy  of  a  reform  in  the 
land  laws  (which  Barton  opposed),  became  the  leading 
politician  in  Missouri.  The  consequence  was  that  there 
was  before  many  years  a  breach,  and  Barton  made  insult 
ing  speeches  against  his  colleague,  referring  to  the  fact 
that  the  latter  had  come  to  the  West  uninvited,  "  com 
plained  of  having  been  driven  by  tyranny  and  persecution; 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  493 

desired  our  hospitality  and  auspices,  and  a  little  room  to 
ie  down  and  repose,"  and  was  then  taken  up  by  us  and 
advanced  to  high  station. 

"  We  found,''  Barton  went  on,  "  the  assailant  of  our 
(characters  and  our  motives  a  scrubby  political  scion ;  and 
thought  it  a  fruit-bearing  species.  We  nourished  it,  and 
jit  grew  when,  lo!  it  proved  a  political  bohon  upas,  and 
blighted  and  desolated  all  for  miles  around  its  stem."  * 
Barton  went  on  at  some  length,  making  many  references 
to  Benton  that  were  plain  enough  and  were  in  some  in 
stances  very  severe  and  insulting.  Benton  did  not  reply 
to  these  personalities,  nor  do  I  know  of  his  ever  noticing 
them  in  any  way. 

With  Buckner,  too,  who  succeeded  Barton,  Benton 
was  by  no  means  on  good  terms,  and  in  his  last  years  in 
the  Senate  it  has  been  seen  that  he  and  Atchison  were 
leaders  of  bitterly  contesting  factions  in  Missouri.  Only 
with  Linn  do  his  relations  seem  to  have  been  at  all  times 
cordial.  But,  as  is  so  often  the  case  with  men  of  many 
dislikes,  he  had  also  his  friends  of  a  lifetime;  of  these 
some  have  appeared  already,  and  Linn,  and  Dodge  of 
Wisconsin,  may  also  be  mentioned. 

That  he  was  a  bitter  and  rancorous  hater  cannot  for  a 
moment  be  doubted,  and  he  was  equally  certainly  vindic 
tive  in  the  sense  that  he  would  do  great  injustice  and 
inflict  grievous  injury  on  those  with  whom  he  quarrelled. 
Indeed,  Mr.  Birch  even  says  that  "  if  he  ever  forgot  or 
forgave  an  intended  injury,  only  his  Creator  knew  it:" 
but  this  is  the  opinion  of  one  who  is  the  son  of  a  political 
opponent  and  is  not  borne  out  by  others.  Thus,  Judge 
Walls,  of  the  United  States  Circuit  Court  of  Missouri, 
said.t  when  announcing  Benton's  death  from  the  bench, 
that  he  and  Benton  had  been  acquainted  for  forty  years, 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  p.  148  et  seq. 

f  Quoted  by  Mr.  Lloyd  in  Benton  Statue  Proceedings. 


494       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

and  that  it  was  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  a  differ 
ence  of  opinion  would  disturb  a  friendship  of  Benton's; 
that  it  was  only  when  he  thought  a  personal  affront  was 
intended  that  he  withdrew  his  friendship. 

He  could,  moreover,  be  just  even  to  a  political  op 
ponent  and  furnish  aid  to  protect  him  against  a  public 
hue  and  cry.  Thus,  when  Clay  was  almost  universally 
charged  with  having  been  guilty  in  1824-25  of  "  bargain 
and  corruption"  with  Adams,  so  as  to  secure  a  Cabinet 
position,  Benton  said  at  the  time  in  conversation  that 
Clay  had  told  him  in  the  early  part  of  December,  1824, 
that  he  intended  to  vote  for  Adams,  and  later  came  out 
in  a  public  letter  to  the  same  effect.*  And  Bay,  who  knew 
Benton  well  latterly,  while  he  admits  that  he  was  often 
vindictive  and  thus  at  times  guilty  of  great  injustice, 
writes  "  but  that  he  possessed  a  cold,  unforgiving,  and 
unrelenting  heart  is  not  true,  and  we  could  give  many  in 
stances  that  came  under  our  personal  observation  to  prove 
the  contrary."  It  may  be  mentioned,  too,  in  this  connec 
tion  that  after  the  passage  of  the  Compromise  Measures 
in  1850,  though  he  and  Clay  had  been  political  enemies 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century  and  had  recently  had  numerous 
savage  encounters,  Benton  felt  so  grateful  to  Clay  for  his 
then  services  to  the  country  that  he  asked  Blair  to  com 
municate  his  feelings  to  his  opponent. f 

One  conspicuous  instance  of  this  kind  in  his  latter 
years  was  the  renewal  of  friendly  relations  with  Webster, 
with  whom  he  had  for  some  years  not  been  on  speaking 
terms.  This  was  brought  about  by  Benton,  after  his  nar 
row  escape  from  death  at  the  time  of  the  explosion  of  the 
"  Princeton's"  gun,  approaching  Webster  and  suggesting 
that  they  had  better  bury  their  differences. 

And  this  reconciliation  led  to  another.     A  politician 

*C  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  679. 
t  General  F.  P.  Blair,  Jr.'s,  Address. 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  495 

of  Missouri  named  Wilson,  between  whom  and  Benton 
there  had  for  many  years  been  the  most  bitter  enmity, 
visited  Webster  and  asked  his  aid  in  securing  some 
letters  to  important  people  in  California  whither  he 
was  going  with  the  hope  of  bettering  his  broken  for 
tunes.  Benton  occurred  to  Webster  as  the  very  man 
to  furnish  such  letters,  but  it  was  only  after  much 
effort  that  WTilson's  pride  gave  way  and  he  allowed 
Webster  to  induce  him  to  call  on  Benton  with  a  letter 
explaining  the  situation.  Benton  then  had  Wilson  to 
breakfast  and  fairly  loaded  him  down  with  a  mass  of 
letters  to  leading  men,  and  both  broke  down  a  little  in 
talking  over  the  folly  of  their  past  abuse  of  one  another. 
It  must  at  the  same  time  be  remembered  that  these  in 
stances  occurred  towards  the  end  of  Benton's  career, 
when  advancing  years  and  possibly  other  causes  had 
somewhat  softened  him. 

It  is  said  that  a  deep  impression  was  made  upon  him 
by  his  narrow  escape  from  death  at  the  explosion  of  the 
great  gun  on  the  "  Princeton"  in  1844.  He  was  occupy 
ing  a  certain  position,  when  some  officer,  knowing  his  in 
terest  in  military  affairs,  called  him  to  a  still  better  point 
of  observation,  and  Gilmer  took  the  place  he  vacated.  In 
a  few  minutes  the  gun  was  fired  and  Gilmer  was  instantly 
killed  while  standing  in  the  very  spot  Benton  had  occu 
pied.  Bay  says  that  he  often  heard  Benton  refer  to  his 
escape  on  this  occasion  as  a  providential  interposition,  and 
Webster  is  quoted  by  Harvey  as  saying  that  at  the  time 
of  their  reconciliation  Benton  spoke  of  the  occurrence,  and 
said  that  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  the  touch  on  his  shoulder 
by  the  officer,  who  had  led  him  to  another  position,  was 
"  the  hand  of  the  Almighty  stretched  down  there,  draw 
ing  me  away  from  what  otherwise  would  have  been 
instantaneous  death.  .  .  .  That  one  circumstance  has 
changed  the  whole  current  of  my  thoughts  and  life.  I 
feel  that  I  am  a  different  man,  and  I  want  in  the  first  place 


496       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

to  be  at  peace  with  all  those  with  whom  I  have  been  so 
sharply  at  variance." 

That,  despite  his  often  furious  attacks  on  those  who 
stood  in  his  way,  he  held  in  the  main  a  kindly  judgment 
of  most  of  his  contemporaries  is  amply  proven  by  his 
notices  of  the  leaders  among  them  in  the  "  Thirty 
Years'  View."  Of  nearly  all  he  has  a  good  word 
to  say,  and  he  generally  gives  full  meed  of  praise  to 
their  good  points.  Even  as  to  Calhoun,  he  fully  no 
tices  his  high  character  and  great  abilities  and  takes 
evident  delight  in  some  of  his  personal  debates  with 
Clay. 

Benton  and  Calhoun  had  apparently  been  friends  in 
their  early  days,  and  had  at  least  worked  together  to 
bring  about  Jackson's  nomination ;  but  the  factional  trou 
bles  later  on  during  Jackson's  presidency  doubtless  sepa 
rated  them,  and  still  later  they  were  looked  upon  as  rival 
aspirants  for  the  control  of  the  Democratic  party.*  Ben- 
ton  announced  in  1838  or  1839  tnat  ne  preferred  defeat 
in  the  coming  presidential  campaign  to  success  with  Cal 
houn,  and  from  at  least  this  date  on  they  were  evidently 
enemies.  Calhoun  was  already  at  that  time  predicting 
disunion  or  civil  war  and  tended  more  and  more  towards 
a  course  which  Benton  saw  must  lead  to  an  attempt  to  break 
up  the  country,  and  here  alone  was  cause  enough  for  his 
distrust  and  dislike.  He  refers  in  numerous  instances  to 
the  growth  of  Calhoun's  constitutional  doctrines,  and 
maintains  that  the  great  Southerner  constantly  abandoned 
his  prior  opinions  and  found  new  doctrines  to  sustain  the 
views  which  he  thought  the  interests  of  the  South  re 
quired.  Benton  writes  of  "  all  the  morbid  views  of  the 
Constitution"  which  Calhoun  held,  and  speaks  of  his  last 
principle  of  the  self-extension  of  the  Constitution  into  the 


* 
p.  188. 


See  e.g.,  John  A.  Quitman's  letter  in  Claiborne's  Quitman,  i., 
& 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  497 

territories  as  one  that  can  only  be  classed  as  a  "  vagary  of 
a  diseased  imagination." 

Their  hatred  of  each  other  grew  as  the  years  went  on, 
and  Benton  probably  looked  upon  Calhoun  as  a  chief  fac 
tor  in  his  own  long  fight  and  final  defeat  in  Missouri, 
besides  considering  him  the  arch-destroyer  of  the  Union.* 
It  is  said  by  Wentworth  that  when  Webster  asked  Ben- 
ton  to  make  some  remarks  in  the  Senate  at  the  session 
in  honor  of  Calhoun,  Benton  refused,  and  said,  "  He  is 
not  dear,  sir, — he  is  not  dead.  Calhoun  died  with  treason 
in  his  heart  and  on  his  lips."  And  at  the  meeting  in  ques 
tion  Harvey  says  that  Webster  told  him  Benton  sat  with 
his  back  turned  towards  the  Senate  and  inattentively 
twirling  his  spectacles. 

Caleb  Cushing  was  one  of  the  few  public  men  whom 
Benton  held  in  very  poor  esteem,  evidently  being  of  opin 
ion  that  he  was  a  man  of  no  principle  and  quite  ready  to 
change  as  the  chances  of  preferment  indicated.  Douglas, 
too,  he  seems  to  have  had  little  opinion  of,  and  Darby 
writes  that,  when  he  was  in  1849  expressing  the  opinion 
at  the  St.  Louis  Pacific  Railroad  Convention  that  Doug 
las  wanted  to  have  the  railroad  built  from  Chicago  to 
the  West  and  to  secure  the  presidency,  Benton  replied, 
"  Douglas  never  can  be  President,  sir.  No,  sir ;  Douglas 
never  can  be  President,  sir.  His  legs  are  too  short,  sir. 
His  coat,  like  a  cow's  tail,  hangs  too  near  the  ground, 
sir." 

Benton  was  at  no  time  consumed  with  that  passion  to 
be  President  which  has  marred  the  careers  of  so  many  of 
our  public  men,  and  in  several  instances  stopped  budding 
movements  in  his  own  favor ;  nor  do  I  see  the  least  rea 
son  to  doubt  his  absolute  sincerity  in  these  cases.  Soon 
after  Van  Buren's  term  began,  in  1837,  he  was  put  for- 

*View,  i.,  p.  342;  ii.,  pp.  98,  120,  136,  160,  183,  314,  697,  713, 
729,  733- 

3* 


498       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

ward  as  a  candidate  for  1840  by  at  least  two  news 
papers,  one  in  Philadelphia  and  one  in  Missouri,  but 
he  at  once  declined  and  urged  the  renomination  of  Van 
Buren. 

Again  in  the  summer  of  1841  a  movement  was  started 
in  Philadelphia  for  his  nomination  in  1844,  but  once  more 
he  declined  and  urged  Van  Buren's  selection,  and  Folk's 
"  Diary"  has  been  quoted  to  show  that  he  continued  to 
favor  Van  Buren  until  Folk's  nomination.  Once  more,  in 
1847,  ne  was  brought  forward  by  a  Missouri  paper  and 
his  name  printed  in  large  type  in  its  columns  for  the 
nomination  in  1849,  but  not  only  had  he  apparently  tried 
to  forestall  this  movement,  but,  as  soon  as  it  was  none 
the  less  started,  he  wrote  that  it  was  contrary  to  his  ex 
pressed  wishes  and  intentions  and  requested  that  his  name 
should  be  dropped. 

Finally,  as  the  existing  parties  began  to  break  up,  he 
was  thought  of  by  the  dissatisfied  Democrats,  and  Chase 
and  his  friends  would  gladly  have  seen  him  nominated  in 
1852.  But  to  the  end  he  adhered  to  the  Democratic  party 
in  the  presidential  elections.  In  1848,  when  Van  Buren 
was  about  to  accept  the  nomination  of  the  Buffalo  con 
vention,  Benton  went  over  to  New  York  and  tried  hard 
to  dissuade  him  from  lending  himself  to  such  a  disinte 
grating  movement,  and  in  1856  he  supported  Buchanan 
against  his  own  son-in-law,  Fremont. 

Benton  twice  declined  the  nomination  as  Minister  to 
France,  offered  him  by  Jackson  and  by  Polk,  and  also 
the  position  of  Secretary  of  War,  offered  him  by  Van 
Buren.  He  writes  in  his  autobiography  that  two  other 
offices  were  intended  for  him,  had  certain  circumstances 
arisen,  which  he  would  have  accepted — that  of  the  com 
mand  of  the  army  during  Jackson's  presidency,  in  case  of 
war  with  Mexico,  and  again  when  war  threatened  with 
France  in  1836,  and  the  like  position  intended  for  him  by 
Polk  during  the  Mexican  War.  It  may  also  be  worthy  of 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  499 

mention  that  he  rarely  accepted  those  invitations  to  com 
plimentary  dinners  with  which  some  public  men  are  so 
much  pleased,  and  others  quite  as  much  bored,  and  seems 
to  have  had  it  generally  understood  that  such  was  his 
custom. 

From  an  early  day  Benton  was  convinced  that  the 
American  people  had  a  great  future  ahead  of  them.  Liv 
ing  on  the  frontier,  he  saw  with  his  own  eyes  the  spread 
of  our  civilization  towards  an  immense  area  of  uninhab 
ited  land,  and  he  appreciated  as  few  did  what  this  meant 
for  our  future  development.  Jealous  of  all  our  rights,  as 
he  saw  them,  he  generally  spoke  with  evident  affection  of 
"  our  America,"  and  both  the  Mississippi  River  and  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  he  often  called  "mare  nostrum,"  and 
wanted  both  to  be  strictly  maintained  as  ours.  "  That  we 
must  have  a  naval  station  on  the  Gulf,"  he  said  in  the 
Senate  on  July  n,  1840,  "  cannot  be  doubted.  .  .  .  The 
time  would  come  when  our  people  would  speak  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  as  the  Romans  did  of  the  Mediterranean, 
'  Mare  nostrum — our  sea/  they  would  say." 

And,  as  did  most  of  our  soundest  statesmen  of  his 
day,  he  looked  with  great  distrust  upon  England,  consid 
ering  her  as  the  only  determined  and  dangerous  opponent 
of  our  growth  and  prosperity.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
far  from  what  is  now  called  a  "  jingo,"  and  by  no  means 
believed  in  claiming  everything  in  sight  as  ours,  as  is  suf 
ficiently  shown  by  his  course  as  to  Oregon. 

To  him,  from  the  very  earliest  day  of  which  we  have 
any  information,  his  country  meant  not  his  State  or  sec 
tion,  but  the  whole  aggregate  United  States.  He  disliked 
as  a  young  man,  he  says,  Jefferson's  reference  to  Burr's 
supposed  plan  for  disunion  in  1806,  and  in  his  later  years 
in  the  Senate  he  expressed  his  grief  at  the  suggestions 
of  the  possibility  of  disunion  contained  in  the  Southern 
protest  upon  the  admission  of  California,  and  he  has  been 
quoted  as  saying  in  another  instance  that  we  should  no 


500       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

more  look  ahead  to  causes  of  disunion  than  to  reasons  for 
divorce  from  our  wives. 

It  is  a  strange  lesson  to  find  three  such  iron-strong 
characters  as  Jackson,  Benton,  and  Houston,  all  growing 
up  in  the  same  general  borderland  of  the  country,  far 
from  the  power  and  pelf  of  administration  and  yet  with 
such  a  burning  love  of  the  Union  as  was  theirs.  They 
all  "  thought  continentally,"  to  use  once  more  the  phrase 
of  their  time  and  section.  Jackson's  case  need  not  be 
emphasized;  and  Houston  told  in  reply  to  Calhoun  in 
1848  how  he,  at  the  time  "  in  the  wilderness,  an  exile  from 
kindred  and  friends  and  sections,"  in  one  of  the  strange 
episodes  of  his  strange  career,  had  heard  of  the  threats 
of  disunion  in  the  days  of  the  struggle  over  the  tariff  and 
nullification,  and  said  they  had  "  rung  in  his  ears  and 
wounded  his  heart."  And  how  true  this  was  was  shown 
wrhen  not  many  years  later  as  governor  of  Texas  he  strove 
to  stop  secession.  So  persistent  was  his  hopeless  struggle 
that  the  ordinance  of  secession  could  only  be  carried  by 
overriding  his  veto;  and,  finally,  when  all  officers  were 
required  to  take  an  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Confederacy, 
he  flatly  refused,  was  declared  deposed,  and  ignominiously 
displaced,  and  then  died  in  two  years  with  his  heart 
broken. 

And  Benton,  the  third  of  this  trio,  so  far  as  I  have 
found,  at  no  time  in  his  career  faltered  for  a  moment  in 
his  devotion  to  the  American  Union  as  the  mistress  to 
whom  his  services  were  due.  This  was  his  loadstar  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  towards  the  close  of  his  career 
became  a  very  passion. 

It  is  true  that  he  thought  the  South  was  unjustly 
treated,  and  writes  *  that  "  the  real  source  of  all  the  dis 
orders  to  which  the  country  was  or  had  been  subject  was 
in  the  system  of  legislation  which  encouraged  the  industry 

*  View,  ii.,  p.  121. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  501 

of  one  part  of  the  Union  at  the  expense  of  the  other, — 
which  gave  rise  to  extravagant  expenditures,  to  be  ex 
pended  unequally  in  the  two  sections  of  the  Union, — and 
which  left  the  Southern  section  to  pay  the  expenses  of  a 
system  which  exhausted  her;"  but  this  opinion  had  no  in 
fluence  whatsoever  with  him,  when  the  South  began  to 
tend  towards  disunion. 

I  know  of  but  one  instance  in  which  his  arguments 
were  to  any  extent  on  the  same  side  as  was  upheld  by  the 
Southern  school.  This  was  during  the  debate  on  Foot's 
resolution,  when  he  was  with  the  South  on  the  main  ques 
tion,  and  his  feelings  were  strongly  aroused  and  probably 
shocked  by  some  of  the  claims  of  power  for  the  Federal 
government  advanced  by  Webster  and  others,  and  he  did 
put  a  hypothetical  case  to  sustain  largely  the  Southern 
theories.  "  Let  us  suppose,"  he  said,*  "  that  a  law  of 
Congress  passes,  declaring  that  slavery  does  not  exist  in 
the  United  States,  .  .  .  that  the  Supreme  Court  takes 
cognizance  of  the  denial,  .  .  .  decides  in  favor  of  the  law 
of  Congress,  and  puts  forth  the  decree  which,  according 
to  the  new  doctrine,  it  is  treason  to  resist.  What  next? 
Either  acquiescence  or  resistance." 

It  cannot,  however,  be  doubted  that  this  was  merely 
an  argument  advanced  in  the  heat  of  discussion ;  and  he 
would  far  rather  have  run  the  risk  of  such  a  palpably 
wrong  decision  being  made  than  to  incur  the  other  risk  of 
the  ultimate  power  being  in  the  States.  Can  we  conceive 
of  the  court's  taking  such  a  revolutionary  step,  Benton 
would  doubtless  have  denounced  the  decision  and  sought 
to  have  it  overruled — as  he  did  with  the  Dred  Scott  case — 
but  the  theoretical  possibility  would  have  had  no  influence 
on  his  opinions.  If  governmental  agencies  act  grossly 
wrongly,  and  fly  in  the  teeth  of  written  laws,  absurd  and 
insoluble  conclusions  can  always  be  brought  about. 

*  C.  D.,  vol.  vi.,  1829-30,  p.  113. 


502       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

As  the  South  came  in  later  years  to  tend  more  and 
more  towards  a  separation  from  their  sister  States,  Ben- 
ton  was  beyond  doubt  among  the  very  first  of  our  public 
men  to  see  whither  they  were  driving,  and  it  has  been 
seen  how  highly  excited  he  often  grew  over  the  matter. 
Years  before  the  Civil  War,  and  at  a  time  when  most  of 
our  public  men  by  no  means  read  aright  the  shadows  of 
coming  events,  he  had  far  better  vision,  and  many  parts  of 
his  "  Thirty  Years'  ViewT"  show  how  distinctly  he  fore 
saw  a  desperate  and  bloody  war  involving  the  future  of 
the  Union.  When  his  forecast  of  events  years  before  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  is  compared  with  the  view  held  by 
Seward  and  others  as  late  as  1861,  what  are  we  to  say  of 
the  relative  capacities  of  the  two  as  statesmen  ? 

As  early  as  1849,  m  ms  Fayette  speech,  he  told  his 
hearers  that  he  had  long  been  urged  by  both  a  Whig  and 
a  Democrat  to  attend  the  Southern  meetings  held  that 
spring  in  Washington,  and  had  been  assured  that,  if  he 
would  come,  he  and  his  friends  could  pass  certain  resolu 
tions  in  favor  of  union  and  break  the  meetings  up;  but 
Benton  says  that  he  was  inexorable,  and  told  his  friends 
that  he  was  "  tired  of  these  plots  against  the  Union — tired 
of  this  threat  of  disunion — that  I  wanted  the  thing  to 
come  to  a  head  that  the  people  might  see  it  and  understand 
it,  and  then  they  would  crush  it  forever."  In  1848,  too, 
in  writing  *  Jackson  of  his  outcoming  speech  against  the 
Texas  treaty,  he  said  that  it  will  show  his  objections  ex 
cept  one,  "  of  which  not  having  the  proofs  sufficiently  full, 
I  did  not  choose  to  name  at  all ;  and  that  was  the  disso 
lution  of  the  Union  and  the  formation  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  to  include  California.  I  did  not  touch  this, 
because  I  did  not  choose  to  go  into  it  without  full  proof." 

Even  earlier,  too,  in  his  answer  to  McDuffie  in  1844, 

*  Letter  to  Jackson  of  May  28,  1848,  in  Jackson  Correspondence 
in  Library  of  Congress. 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  503 

he  seemed  already  to  understand  pretty  well  what  was 
coming,  but  he  ridiculed  the  idea  of  secession  in  his  at 
tack  on  Calhoun's  threats  of  disunion  in  the  Senate  in 
1847,  and  Bradbury  thought  that  this  was  then  his  real 
feeling.  To  me  it  seems  rather  to  have  been  the  passion 
ate  outbreak  of  an  angry  man  and  an  effort  to  cover  with 
ridicule  something  he  detested;  but,  however  this  may 
be,  he  wrote  his  son-in-law  in  April,  1856,  that,  if  the 
Democratic  convention  did  not  nominate  a  man  opposed 
to  slavery  agitation,  he  had  "  no  idea  that  the  Union  can 
hang  together  four  years  under  either  of  the  extreme  par 
ties,"  and  in  that  same  year,  on  a  visit  to  New  England, 
he  told  Bradbury  that  he  believed  the  feeling  in  the  South 
was  so  strong  that  even  Virginia  would  on  a  secret  ballot 
vote  to  secede.  On  this  occasion  he  went  as  far  as  Au 
gusta,  Maine,  and  spoke  earnestly  for  the  Union,  depre 
cating  the  abolition  agitation  and  assuring  his  hearers 
that  those  who  were  carried  away  with  this  "  Speculative 
Philanthropy"  were  doing  no  good. 

His  apprehension  of  disunion  and  hatred  of  it  re 
mained  a  passion  with  him  doubtless  to  his  last  moments, 
and  his  son-in-law  has  written  me  that  one  morning  at 
breakfast,  in  1857  or  1858,  Benton  seemed  unusually  ab 
sorbed  and  then  turned  abruptly  to  him  and  said,  "  Mr. 
Jacob,  North  or  South?"  When  the  son-in-law  explained 
his  position,  Benton  spoke  of  the  approaching  presidential 
election,  and  said  that  if  the  Democratic  party  did  not  suc 
ceed,  the  South  would  make  an  effort  to  secede,  adding 
that  "  the  result  would  be  a  terrible  war,  and  the  outcome 
very  doubtful."  And  the  same  informant  writes  that 
when  Jefferson  Davis  called  at  the  Benton  home  to  ex 
press  his  regrets  upon  Mrs.  Benton's  death,  Benton  was  so 
cold  and  freezing  that  his  daughter  later  remonstrated 
with  him,  but  received  for  reply,  "  My  daughter,  he  is 
plotting  to  destroy  the  country."  Blair,  too,  has  said  that 
very  late  in  Benton's  life  the  latter  read  to  him  the  last 


504       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

sheets  he  had  written  of  the  "  Abridgement"  containing 
Clay's  poignant  reply  to  Barnwell,  who  had  vindicated 
Rhett's  secession  ideas.* 

In  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View,"  too,  he  refers  in  a 
number  of  instances  to  the  evidences  of  a  growing  ten 
dency  towards  disunion  in  the  South,  and  in  his  final 
chapter  speaks  of  the  proofs  he  had  witnessed  of  the 
capacity  of  the  people  for  self-government,  and  thinks  that 
two  great  trials  of  their  capacity  still  remain.  One  of 
these  was  in  regard  to  the  election  of  the  President  by 
popular  vote,  and  the  other  was  whether  "  the  sentiment 
of  political  nationality  .  .  .  is  to  remain  co-extensive 
with  the  Union  ...  or  divide  into  sectionalism,  ending 
in  hate,  alienation,  separation,  and  civil  war." 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  dread  that  all  that  he 
and  the  fathers  before  him  had  labored  to  establish  and 
maintain  might  be  swept  away  clouded  and  embittered 
his  last  years;  and  he  closed  his  great  work  by  writing 
that,  whatever  the  future  might  have  in  store,  he  would 
at  least  have  one  consolation,  "  the  knowledge  of  the  fact 
that  he  has  labored  in  his  day  and  generation  to  preserve 
and  perpetuate  the  blessings  of  that  Union  and  self-gov 
ernment  which  wise  and  good  men  gave  us."  f 

There  can,  I  think,  be  no  doubt  that,  as  the  South 
tended  more  and  more  towards  secession,  Benton  felt 
sadly  the  need  of  new  friends,  who  should  be  supporters 
of  the  Union,  and  had  a  far  more  kindly  feeling  to  New 
England  than  at  any  other  time  in  his  career.  His  visits 
there  point  in  that  direction,  and  again  his  son-in-law  has 
told  me  of  having  driven  Benton  to  a  railroad  station  in 
Kentucky  not  long  after  one  of  these  visits;  and  when 
quite  a  crowd  followed  on  seeing  his  name  on  the  trunk, 
Benton,  who  had  been  much  struck  with  the  universal 


*  C  G.,  3ist  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  1414. 

t  See,  generally,  View,  ii.,  p.  771,  etc.,  782,  etc.,  787,  788. 


GENERAL    TENDENCIES  505 

activity  he  had  seen,  said  "  Mr.  Jacob,  if  these  men  were 
as  busy  as  those  in  New  England,  they  would  not  have 
time  to  follow  me  as  a  monkey-show." 

He  seems  to  have  thought  himself  rich  in  his  early 
years,  but  during  his  public  life  he  was  careless  upon  the 
subject  and  he  died  a  poor  man.  His  son-in-law  thinks 
that  he  spent  his  own  money  to  no  little  extent  in  connec 
tion  with  expeditions  to  explore  the  West,  and  I  have 
come  across  evidence  which  is  at  least  consistent  with 
this  view. 

Benton  had  served  for  thirty  consecutive  years — five 
full  senatorial  terms — in  the  Senate,  and  his  length  of 
service  had  in  his  day  never  been  equalled.  It  has  since 
been  equalled  in  three  instances  and  exceeded  in  two. 
Senator  Jones  of  Nevada  served  five  full  terms,  as  did 
Benton,  and  Senator  Allison  of  Iowa  is  now  beginning  a 
sixth  consecutive  term.  Morrill  was  also  elected  to  a 
sixth  term  and  held  his  seat  in  all  for  nearly  thirty-one 
years. 

Benton  has  often  been  compared  to  his  three  great 
contemporaries,  and  the  result  is  fairly  summed  up  by 
Bay  as  follows :  "  That  he  was  inferior  to  Mr.  Webster 
as  a  close,  logical,  reasoner ;  that  he  was  not  the  equal  of 
Mr.  Clay  as  an  orator;  and  that  Mr.  Calhoun  surpassed 
him  in  the  power  and  condensation  of  language,  all  must 
admit.  But  in  depth  of  mind,  originality  of  thought,  and 
power  to  conceive  and  execute  any  great  measure  of  pub 
lic  welfare,  he  was  the  equal  of  either,  and  in  some 
respects  the  superior  of  all." 

As  a  constructive  and  far-seeing  statesman  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  word,  he  must  be  given  the  very  highest 
credit,  and  some  competent  observers  think  him  far  the 
superior  of  all  his  contemporaries  in  this  respect.  From 
early  youth,  when  he  foresaw  and  foretold  how  the  vast 
unsettled  Western  territory  could  best  be  divided  into 
States,  down  through  his  long  career  stuffed  full  of  many 


506       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

policies  doggedly  urged  for  years,  and  possibly  particu 
larly  in  the  hopeless  struggles  of  his  last  years  against 
the  causes  leading  to  civil  war,  he  certainly  foresaw  com 
ing  events  far  more  nearly  than  did  his  contemporaries ; 
and  he  acted  well  up  to  the  sound  rule  of  simple  laws 
intended  to  allow  the  freest  possible  scope  to  that  indi 
vidual  action  which  is  the  atomic  force  of  society,  and 
which  enables  the  body  politic  to  wield  the  utmost  power 
of  which  it  is  capable — a  power  so  nearly  resistless  as  to 
be  comparable  to  those  of  nature, 


CHAPTER      XXIV 

NOMINATED  FOR  GOVERNOR  OF  MISSOURI — HIS  CAMPAIGN 
AND  DEFEAT LITERARY  WORK SORROWS  OF  DECLIN 
ING  YEARS MORTAL  DISEASE DEATH FUNERAL 

IN  1856  Benton  made  his  last  campaign,  running  as 
candidate  for  governor  of  Missouri  on  the  ticket  of  the 
"  Benton  Democracy."  It  seems  that  his  friends  thought 
it  an  unwise  step  on  his  part,  and  the  result  of  the  can 
vass  is  not  the  only  evidence  that  they  were  right.  He  was 
by  this  time  too  much  out  of  touch  with  public  sentiment 
and  had  suffered  too  many  failures.  Already  twice  de 
feated  for  the  Senate  and  then  for  the  House  after  serv 
ing  but  one  term  in  it,  the  evident  growth  of  public  opin 
ion  in  his  State  had  been  too  much  away  from  his  views 
for  him  to  have  any  reasonable  chance  of  success.  Possi 
bly — though  it  is  not  likely — he  foresaw  the  result  in  ad 
vance,  but  thought  it  none  the  less  desirable  to  make  the 
campaign  so  as  to  emphasize  what  he  thought  the  under 
lying  cause  of  the  divisions  among  the  bitterly  wrangling 
factions  of  the  Democracy  and  to  awake  the  people  to  a 
consciousness  of  the  awful  struggle  that  lay  but  a  little 
way  ahead. 

At  the  time  of  this  last  public  effort  Benton  was  a 
man  well  past  seventy-four  years  of  age  and  was  suffer 
ing  from  the  dreadful  gnawing  malady  which  ended  his 
earthly  career  in  about  a  year  and  a  half,  but  he  none  the 
less  made  a  canvass  such  as  not  many  men  are  capable  of 
in  their  prime.  Going  from  one  end  of  the  State  to  the 
other,  this  mortally-struck  septuagenarian  made  speech 
after  speech  of  such  length  as  would  be  listened  to  from 
but  few  public  men,  so  that  it  is  generally  said  that  he 

507. 


508       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

travelled  some  twelve  hundred  miles  and  made  forty 
speeches  of  from  one  to  two  hours'  length. 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  travelling  in  Missouri 
at  that  day  was  not  accomplished  in  parlor-cars  and  sleep 
ers  ;  on  the  contrary,  a  large  part  of  the  distance  was  of 
course  covered  in  carriage  or  on  horseback  over  the 
roughest  kind  of  roads  and  often  where  there  was  no 
road  at  all.  The  late  Peter  L.  Foy,  who  made  at  least 
part  of  the  trip  as  special  correspondent  of  the  Missouri 
Democrat,  wrote  to  me  of  the  long  drives  they  took  over 
the  prairies,  and  added  that  he  was  very  near  Benton  most 
of  the  time,  "  and  listened  to  his  conversation  or  rather 
his  reminiscences  and  opinions  with  unflagging  interest." 
It  is  probably  to  this  campaign  that  John  M.  Palmer 
refers,  when  he  speaks  of  seeing  Benton  upon  the  latter' s 
return  from  his  "  forty  days  in  the  wilderness/'  and  adds 
that  Benton  said  of  his  enemies  "  I  have  laid  them  out 
like  milestones  on  my  way/' 

Another  touch  of  his  method  during  this  last  charge  of 
his  is  given  by  Senator  Vest,  which  the  reader  will  inter 
pret  either  as  a  mere  outburst  of  fury  and  rancorous  ha 
tred  against  an  arch-enemy  or  else  as  an  instance  in  which 
he  had  been  able  to  some  extent  to  look  into  the  seeds  of 
time  and  see  which  grain  would  grow.  "  I  heard  him  in 
1856,"  says  Mr.  Vest,  "  when  a  candidate  for  governor 
of  Missouri,  declare  emphatically  in  a  public  address  that 
if  he  had  been  President  in  1828,  instead  of  threatening 
to  hang  Calhoun,  he  would  have  hanged  him  on  the  east 
ern  exposure  of  the  Capitol,  and  appealed  to  the  people 
of  the  United  States  to  vindicate  his  action." 

As  it  seems  to  me,  it  is  only  in  the  light  of  a  forlorn 
hope  or  as  a  sacrifice  battle  that  the  wisdom  of  Benton's 
campaign  for  governor  can  be  maintained.  Success,  at 
least,  was  impossible,  and  when  the  struggle  was  over  and 
the  ballots  counted,  he  was  found  to  be  far  in  the  rear  and 
to  have  fewer  votes  than  either  of  the  other  two  leading 


THOMAS  H.  BENTON,  .tT.  ABOUT  70. 

From  a  painting  in  the  Missouri  Historical  Society. 


LAST    YEARS  509 

candidates.  Trusten  Polk  (Democrat  or  anti-Benton), 
who  was  elected,  had  46,993  votes;  Robert  C.  Ewing 
(Whig)  had  40,589;  and  Benton  only  27,618. 

The  year  of  this  campaign  was  one  in  which  a  Presi 
dent  was  to  be  chosen,  and  Benton  adhered  to  the  regu 
lar  party  candidate,  voting  for  Buchanan  against  his  own 
son-in-law,  Fremont.  He  had  had  a  poor  opinion  of 
Buchanan,  but  his  view  doubtless  was,  as  Bay  writes, 
that  Fremont  was  a  merely  sectional  candidate,  and  his 
pride  in  and  love  for  the  American  nation  could  find  noth 
ing  to  be  desired  in  the  support  of  one  whose  election 
would  have  tended  directly  towards  the  disintegration  and 
breaking  up  of  that  Union  which  he  well-nigh  wor 
shipped. 

It  was  publicly  known  during  the  canvass  that  he  was 
an  opponent  of  his  eminent  son-in-law,  and  in  the  early 
days  of  the  campaign  he  had  written  to  another  son-in-law 
(Mr.  Jacob),  "  It  has  been  a  great  mortification  to  us  all 
that  Fremont  has  allowed  himself  to  be  got  hold  of  by 
the  fusionists.  I  gave  him  my  opinion  of  it  from  the 
first,  and  did  what  I  could  to  prevent  it,  but  in  vain,  tell 
ing  from  the  beginning  that  my  opposition  to  it  would 
have  to  become  public.  I  was  not  able  to  stop  it,  but  I 
think  it  will  die  out.  Those  who  started  him  counted 
upon  the  support  of  my  name.  I  have  taken  care  to  un 
deceive  them;  and  now  many  of  them  are  like  a  man 
courting  a  girl  for  her  fortune,  and  when  he  finds  she  has 
none,  won't  have  her.  I  think  he  will  be  got  out  of  it  yet." 

Hardly  one  year  and  a  half  of  life  now  remained  to 
Benton ;  but,  though  all  his  political  hopes  were  crushed 
and  he  flung  aside  on  the  scrap-heap  by  the  hard  fates 
which  guide  the  growth  of  human  history;  though  thus 
deprived  of  all  possible  chance  of  influencing  public  opin 
ion  in  that  only  way  which  he  had  known  for  over  thirty 
years:  with,  too,  a  mortal  malady  gnawing  at  his  vitals 
of  so  dreadful  a  nature  that  men  and  women  speak  of  it 


510       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

with  bated  breath,  suffering  from  it  often  the  most  ex 
cruciating  torments  and  on  at  least  one  occasion  brought 
close  to  death's  door  and  his  mind  as  well  as  body  over 
mastered  for  some  weeks,  long  before  his  filial  release, 
this  man  of  steel  by  no  means  gave  up  activity. 

As  late  as  December  i,  1857,  he  was  striving  to  arrange 
that  "  right  leads  should  be  taken  at  the  beginning  of  the 
session.  Providence,  and  folly,  and  wickedness,"  he 
wrote  some  friend,  "  have  fixed  things  to  the  hands  of  the 
friends  of  harmony  and  the  Union,  and  it  is  for  them  to 
avail  themselves  of  the  advantage."  And  at  least  as  soon 
as  his  "  Thirty  Years'  View"  was  ended,  he  had  taken  up 
the  immense  task  of  publishing  an  "  Abridgement  of  the 
Debates  of  Congress,"  and  worked  on  at  this  literally  to 
the  very  night  before  his  death. 

It  is  said  that  when  his  powers  began  rapidly  to  fail 
and  he  could  no  longer  sit  up  in  bed,  and  was  even  at  last 
barely  able  to  whisper,  he  continued  the  work  with  the  aid 
of  a  daughter  as  an  interpreter  and  with  one  of  his  sons- 
in-law  as  amanuensis  to  his  dictation,  Dyer  specifying 
that  "  he  whispered  the  last  few  pages  of  the  work,  as  the 
breath  was  slowly  fading  from  his  iron  lips."  But  even 
with  all  this  effort  the  fell  sergeant  interrupted  him 
before  the  work  was  completed,  and  he  was  only  able  to 
bring  it  down  to  the  end  of  the  debates  upon  the  Com 
promise  Measures  of  1850. 

While  this  enormous  work  was  on  hand,  the  decision 
in  the  Dred  Scott  case  was  announced  on  March  6,  1857, 
and  stirred  Benton's  nature  to  its  depths.  He  had  lived 
too  long  under  the  Missouri  Compromise  to  be  able  to 
hear  that  famous  decision  with  patience  or  in  silence,  and 
he  at  once  wrote  an  elaborate  and  most  valuable  review. 

There  is  probably  little  new  or  original  in  it  in  the 
way  of  criticism  of  the  grounds  of  the  decision,  but  from 
beginning  to  end  the  pamphlet  is  full  of  most  valuable 
historical  knowledge  bearing  on  the  general  subject,  while 


LAST    YEARS  511 

the  trenchant  and  at  times  fairly  flaming  language  tells 
how  deeply  the  author  was  stirred  by  what  he  thought  a 
palpable  error  and  wrong.  It  was  written,  too,  under  the 
greatest  difficulties,  and  he  says  in  a  part,  "  I  was  break 
ing  down  under  the  terrible  attack  which  kept  me  for  two 
weeks  face  to  face  with  death,  when  I  was  writing  this 
Examination,  and  had  to  break  off  abruptly,  leaving  two 
entire  heads  untouched  and  not  even  alluded  to."  In  his 
opinion,  the  first  great  error  of  the  court  was  in 

"  assuming  without  right  and  without  necessity  to  decide  upon  the 
constitutionality  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  Act  and  the  self-ex 
tension  of  the  Constitution  to  the  territories,  .  .  .  making  a  bridge 
to  get  from  a  case  of  personal  rights  to  a  question  of  political 
power.  .  .  .  The  result,"  he  sums  up  after  examining  the  grounds 
of  the  decision  and  the  history  of  the  matter  in  general,  "is  that 
the  decisions  conflict  with  the  uniform  action  of  all  the  departments 
of  the  Federal  government  from  its  foundation  to  the  present  time, 
and  cannot  be  received  as  a  rule  to  govern  Congress  and  the  people 
\vithout  reversing  that  action  and  admitting  the  political  supremacy 
of  the  court  and  accepting  an  altered  Constitution  from  its  hands, 
and  taking  a  new  and  portentous  point  of  departure  in  the  working 
of  the  government.  These  decisions,  being  political,  are  dependent 
upon  moral  considerations  for  their  effect.  They  cannot  be  en 
forced.  No  mandamus  can  be  directed  to  Congress  and  the  people ; 
no  process  of  contempt  can  issue  against  them." 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  reproduce  here  the  legal  and 
constitutional  grounds  upon  which  he  based  his  criticism, 
but  some  samples  should  be  given  of  the  savage  and  acrid 
language  he  uses  in  reviewing  various  acts  of  the  public 
authorities  in  regard  to  then  recent  public  events,  and 
especially  the  repeal  by  Congress  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise.  He  inveighed  strongly  against  Pierce's  message 
of  December,  1856,  which  was  to  no  little  extent  devoted 
to  laudation  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  and  which  Ben- 
ton  believed  to  have  been  mainly  written  by  the  Attorney- 
General,  Caleb  Cushing,  adding  that  "  Mr.  Pierce  is  not 
obnoxious  to  the  strictures  I  am  forced  to  make." 


512       LIFE    OF    THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

He  then  went  on  that  its  eleven  pages  upon  this  subject 
showed  "  undaunted  mendacity,  moral  callosity,  mental 
obliquity,  Old  Bailey  attorney  perversions  of  law  and  evi 
dence  :"  specified  a  recent  historical  fact  which  he  deemed 
undeniably  true,  and  wrote  that  "  it  requires  a  courageous 
and  veteran  disregard  of  the  laws  of  veracity  to  assume 
the  contrary,'*'  as  the  message  did:  and  reviled  the  whole 
scheme  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  repealing  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  as  "  all  fraud,  cheat,  trick,  swindle, 
quackery,  charlatanry,  demagoguery,  bladdery,  and  legis 
lative  blackleggery." 

It  required  deep  feeling  to  lead  to  such  abuse  of  men 
and  measures  opposed  to  him,  and  we  need  not  wonder 
that,  though  he  nominally  exonerated  Pierce,  yet  all  rela 
tions  between  them  were  broken,  despite  former  friend 
ship,  and  an  enmity  grew  up  in  its  place  which  is  said  to 
have  led  to  the  removal  from  office  of  all  of  Benton's 
friends  in  Missouri. 

In  regard  to  the  general  character  of  Benton's  literary 
productions  in  his  latter  years,  the  pamphlet  we  have  been 
examining  is  bitter  and  hot-tempered,  as  the  extracts 
given  serve  to  show,  but  it  is  beyond  doubt  a  very  valuable 
contribution  to  the  general  history  of  the  subject.  A 
magna  pars  indeed  of  the  whole  subject,  he  here  poured 
out  his  vast  stores  of  knowledge  as  to  the  secret  moves 
and  motives  of  leaders,  and  as  to  the  origin  and  growth, 
for  example,  of  many  of  those  syllogistic  straws  which 
were  forged  in  the  wonderful  brain  of  Calhoun  in  the 
hope  of  gaining  for  his  people  the  rights  which  he  con 
sidered  absolutely  vital  to  them.  The  student  of  the  mo 
tives  of  the  South  in  these  latter-year  struggles  in  the 
Union  can  never  afford  to  leave  this  pamphlet  aside. 

As  to  the  "  Abridgment  of  the  Debates  of  Congress," 
it  was  not  a  work  calling  for  originality  or  for  expression 
of  opinion,  and  its  sixteen  large  volumes  must  stand 
chiefly  as  a  monument  to  his  vast  capacity  for  work.  The 


LAST    YEARS  513 

drudgery  of  such  an  undertaking  would  frighten  many 
into  an  illness,  but  Benton  accomplished  it  in  a  short  space 
of  time — the  Introduction  to  the  first  volume  bears  date 
in  May,  1856,  within  two  years  of  his  death, — before  the 
days  of  typewriters  and  apparently  without  the  aid  of  a 
clerk,  except  when  life's  breath  was  almost  leaving  his 
body. 

His  chief  work,  the  "  Thirty  Years'  View,"  may  safely 
be  left  to  speak  for  itself.  Heavy,  cumbersome,  con 
stantly  pedantic  in  style,  without  index  to  point  a  reader 
where  in  its  two  vast  volumes  to  seek  for  the  information 
he  wants ;  redolent  of  that  egotism  which  was  its  author's 
greatest  weakness,  it  is  yet  so  stuffed  with  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  our  country  and  of  the  workings  of  its  govern 
ment  that  all  historians  turn  to  it  and  find  it  a  deep  well 
of  information. 

Too  long  and  far  too  heavy  for  the  ordinary  reader, 
he  who  is  much  interested  in  American  history  and  has 
some  knowledge  of  the  subject  will,  on  the  other  hand, 
read  it  not  only  with  profit  but  often  with  profound  in 
terest.  In  1851,  Benton  wrote  to  Hamlin  of  the  work  he 
was  engaged  upon,  and  spoke  of  it  as  "  being  a  selection 
of  my  speeches,  with  historical  notes  and  illustrations:" 
and  the  reader,  occasionally  a  little  weary  at  seeing  ahead 
of  him  further  copious  "  extracts  from  Mr.  Benton's 
speech,"  will  think  the  description  not  inapt.  He  wrote  in 
a  preface  that  he  leaves  out  things  he  would  wisfi  for 
gotten,  and  tells  us  that  his  chief  aim  is  to  give  inside 
views  of  the  underlying  motive  forces  rather  than  merely 
the  surface  indications  of  what  led  to  any  particular  policy 
or  action. 

One  most  conspicuous  feature  of  the  whole  book  has 
been  already  adverted  to, — its  kindly  judgment  of  his 
contemporaries.  Few  men  can  live  through  the  struggles 
of  public  life  without  deriving  the  worst  impressions  of 
many  of  their  compeers,  but  of  very  few  does  Benton  have 


514       LIFE    OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

much  evil  to  say  in  the  "  View/'  while  the  formal  notices 
he  prints  of  many  who  died  before  him,  are  nearly  all 
highly  appreciative,  and  not  a  few  give  valuable  details 
of  their  lives. 

This  work,  too,  is  a  monument  to  his  vast  industry, 
and  in  one  respect  which  does  not  appear  on  the  surface. 
When  the  second  volume  was  far  on  in  composition,  his 
house  was  burned  down  and  a  large  mass  of  the  finished 
manuscript  completely  destroyed :  but  he  at  once  went  to 
work  and  rewrote  it.  The  delay  thus  caused  was,  he 
thought,  about  six  months,  and  not  long  after  the  fire,  in 
the  summer  of  1855,  he  wrote  his  publishers  "  I  work  all 
the  time,  refusing  all  invitations  to  go  anywhere."  He 
expected  the  book  to  sell  largely,  but  these  hopes  were  not 
realized.  The  "  Abridgment"  was  of  course  not  a  book 
to  sell,  but  it  has  undoubtedly  been  the  means  of  enabling 
thousands  of  students  in  small  communities  to  obtain 
access  to  the  important  debates  which  they  would  never 
have  secured  otherwise. 

Some  of  Benton's  shorter  writings  of  an  earlier 
period  were  also  admirably  done,  in  particular  those 
notices  in  which  he  reviewed  the  careers  of  deceased  con 
temporaries.  The  language  is  better  than  in  his  more 
elaborate  compositions  and  far  superior  to  that  of  his 
speeches,  but  they  are  in  particular  full  of  the  touch  of 
human  nature  which  makes  all  the  world  kin.  He  was 
conscious  of  their  excellence  and  wrote  in  his  autobiog 
raphy  of  their  being  generally  admired  because  of  the 
perception  of  character  they  exhibited ;  and  his  one-time 
enemy,  Foote,  wrote  years  later  in  "  The  Bench  and  Bar 
of  the  South  and  Southwest"  of  Benton's  eulogies  in  gen 
eral,  and  in  particular  of  that  on  Dr.  Linn,  in  the  highest 
terms  as  compositions  "  which  no  man  of  just  taste  can 
peruse  without  unmixed  gratification." 

The  notice  of  Commodore  Rodgers  in  the  "  Thirty 
Years'  View"  may  also  be  mentioned  as  an  admirable 


LAST    YEARS  515 

sketch  of  a  deceased  contemporary  in  another  walk  of 
life;  while  the  salutatory  oration  delivered  in  St.  Louis 
to  Colonel  Doniphan  upon  his  return  from  his  wonderful 
march  to  Mexico  is  a  slightly  different,  but  maybe  even 
more  remarkable,  illustration  of  his  power  of  expressing 
appreciation  of  great  deeds. 

As  is  often  the  case,  Benton's  declining  years  were  full 
of  sorrow.  His  wife,  his  devotion  to  whom  was  such  as 
to  be  rarely  equalled  even  by  men  of  the  most  gentle 
nature,  had  slight  strokes  of  paralysis  in  1844  and  was 
from  that  date  an  invalid.  He  at  once,  despite  the  harass 
ing  circumstances  of  his  remaining  political  life,  devoted 
a  large  part  of  his  precious  time  to  caring  for  her  and 
would  never  from  that  time  on  go  out  to  drive  or  to  any 
amusement  of  any  kind  in  the  evening.  Her  mind  seems 
gradually  to  have  failed,  but  she  never  ceased  her  delight 
in  being  near  him,  and  he  always  aimed  to  amuse  her  and 
bore  the  necessary  trials  of  her  weakness  with  absolute 
dignity  and  without  a  sign  of  consciousness  to  the  outside 
world.  Dyer  tells  a  story  of  how  some  distinguished  for 
eigner  was  brought  one  evening  to  the  Benton  house  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  the  Missouri  Senator,  and  while 
the  party  of  several  men  were  talking  together  in  the 
parlor,  poor  Mrs.  Benton  appeared  at  the  door,  much 
deshabille,  and  stood  gazing  fondly  at  her  husband. 
When  the  company  began  to  look  towards  the  door,  Ben- 
ton  did  the  same  and,  seeing  his  wife,  at  once,  with  the 
greatest  dignity,  went  to  her  and  led  her  in,  introducing 
the  company  to  her  "  with  the  majesty  of  a  demigod."  He 
then  placed  her  beside  him  and  went  on  with  the  conversa 
tion,  precisely  as  if  everything  was  as  might  be  wanted, 
while  the  others  took  no  notice  of  the  occurrence  but  were 
deeply  moved  at  the  tenderness  shown  by  him. 

Mrs.  Benton  died  rather  suddenly,  it  seems,  on  Sep 
tember  10,  1854,  in  the  absence  of  her  husband,  who  was 
either  in  or  on  the  way  to  St.  Louis.  They  had  had  the 


516       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

great  misfortune  to  lose  both  of  their  sons, — a  misfortune 
which  was  of  course  aggravated  to  the  father  by  the 
necessity  of  largely  bearing  it  alone,  because  of  his  wife's 
failure.  On  the  occasion  of  the  death  of  the  youngest — 
James  McDowell  Benton — the  father  made  some  speech 
in  St.  Louis  in  which  he  poured  out  his  lamentations  in 
the  following  language  :* 

"  I  have  domestic  affections  sorely  lacerated  in  these  latter 
times;  an  afflicted  wife  whom  I  have  never  neglected,  and  who 
needs  my  attention  now  more  than  ever ;  children,  some  separated 
from  me  by  the  wide  expanse  of  oceans  and  continents,  others  by 
the  slender  bounds  which  separate  time  from  eternity.  I  touch  the 
age  which  the  Psalmist  assigns  for  the  limit  of  manly  life,  and  must 
be  thoughtless  indeed  if  I  do  not  think  of  something  beyond  the 
fleeting  and  shadowy  pursuits  of  this  life,  of  all  which  I  have  seen 
the  vanity.  What  is  my  occupation?  Ask  the  undertaker,  that  good 
Mr.  Lynch,  whose  face,  present  on  so  many  mournful  occasions,  has 
become  pleasant  to  me.  He  knows  what  occupies  my  thoughts  and 
cares ;  gathering  the  bones  of  the  dead — a  mother,  sister,  two  sons, 
a  grandchild — planting  the  cypress  over  assembled  graves,  and 
marking  the  spot  where  I  and  those  who  are  dear  to  me  are  soon  to 
be  laid ;  all  on  the  sunset  side  of  the  Father  of  Floods,  the  towering 
city  of  St.  Louis  on  one  hand,  the  rolling  stream  of  the  Missouri 
on  the  other ;  and  where  a  cemetery  of  large  dimensions  is  to  be 
the  future  necropolis  of  unnumbered  generations.  These  are  my 
thoughts  and  cares,  and  the  undertaker  knows  them." 

The  eldest  son  Randolph  had,  it  seems,  not  a  little  of 
the  dogged  will  and  strong  determination  of  his  father, 
and  some  of  the  daughters,  too,  inherited  his  high  mettle. 
With  this  went,  if  tradition  is  to  be  believed,  a  degree  of 
self-will,  and  some  at  least  are  said  to  have  made  mar 
riages  not  a  little  against  the  wishes  of  their  parents.  It 
can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  career  of  John  C.  Fre- 

*  This  speech  is  printed  in  a  pamphlet  in  the  Gilpin  Library  of 
the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  entitled,  "  Funeral  Discourse 
on  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Benton,  wife  of  Hon.  Thomas  H.  Benton,  deliv 
ered  in  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church,  Monday,  March  26,  1855, 
by  Rev.  N.  L.  Rice,  D.D.,  St.  Louis,  1855." 


LAST    YEARS  517 

mont  was  on  many  occasions  greatly  influenced  by  his 
Benton-like  wife,  and  in  one  instance  she  certainly  saved 
it  from  blight  by  the  audacity  of  a  very  young  wife  who 
dared  to  tear  up  letters  from  high  military  authorities  and 
send  instead  post-haste  orders  of  her  own  to  the  young 
lieutenant  to  be  off  at  once  on  his  exploring  expedition 
and  out  of  reach  of  orders  to  stop.  All  the  daughters 
married :  Eliza  becoming  the  wife  of  William  Carey 
Jones,  Jessie  Ann  of  John  C.  Fremont,  Sarah  of  Richard 
Taylor  Jacob,  and  Susan  of  Baron  Gauldree  Boileau  of 
the  French  Legation  at  Washington. 

It  has  been  said  that  Benton  enjoyed  remarkably  good 
health,  and  I  have  found  no  interruption  of  this  until  late 
in  the  course  of  the  disease  which  ended  his  life.  He 
spoke  *  once  of  having  gone  to  Cincinnati  in  April  of 
1844  for  "recovery  from  a  great  injury,"  but  I  do  not 
know  to  what  this  referred,  and  it  can  hardly  have  had 
any  connection  with  his  final  disease.  This  latter  was  a 
cancer  of  the  lower  bowel,  which  cannot  well  have  en 
dured  so  long  as  fourteen  years.  Mrs.  Fremont  writes 
that  he  had  the  cancer  at  the  time  his  house  was  burned  in 
February,  1855,  and  was  already  consulting  physicians, 
though  concealing  the  trouble  from  his  family.  Later,  an 
operation  gave  temporary  relief,  but  the  disease  returned. 
He  suffered  atrocious  torments  from  it  often  and  was 
once  in  1857  for  some  two  weeks  very  near  dying,  but  the 
end  did  not  finally  come  until  the  morning  of  Saturday, 
April  10,  1858.  His  last  audible  words  were  "  I  am  com 
fortable  and  content." 

On  the  evening  preceding  his  death,  the  President  had 
called  upon  him  and  had  a  long  interview.  Benton  is 
said  to  have  been  much  gratified  at  the  visit  and  to  have 
expressed  his  extreme  solicitude  for  the  condition  of 
public  affairs  and  a  painful  sense  of  the  imminent  dangers 

*  C.  G.,  28th  Cong.,  ist  Sess.,  appendix,  p.  499. 


518       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

which  threatened  the  country,  exhorting  Buchanan  to 
rely  upon  Divine  support  and  guidance.* 

On  the  day  preceding  his  death  a  rumor  got  abroad 
that  the  end  had  come,  but  the  Union  wrote  that  inquiry 
showed  that  "  late  in  the  afternoon  he  was  propped  up  in 
bed,  working,  with  his  indomitable  perseverance  and  in 
dustry,"  upon  the  "  Abridgment."  The  rumor  of  his 
death  spread  pretty  generally  and  on  Friday,  April  9, 
Morris  of  Pennsylvania  said  in  the  House  of  Representa 
tives  that  he  "  thought  it  proper  that  the  House  should 
now  adjourn,  to  take  notice  of  a  fact  in  the  history  of  the 
country."  As  soon  as  he  explained  that  he  had  just  heard 
of  Benton's  death,  his  motion  was  at  once  carried ;  and  it 
was  only  after  the  actual  adjournment  that  Jones  of  Ten 
nessee  was  able  to  have  read  a  letter  dated  April  8  from 
Benton  to  him  and  Houston  of  the  Senate,  in  which  the 
writer  said, 

"  To  you,  as  old  Tennessee  friends,  I  address  myself  to  say 
that,  in  the  event  of  my  death  here,  I  desire  that  there  shall  not  be 
any  notice  of  it  in  Congress.  There  is  no  rule  of  either  House  that 
will  authorize  the  announcement  of  my  death ;  and  if  there  were 
such  a  rule,  I  should  not  wish  it  to  be  applied  in  my  case,  as  being 
contrary  to  my  feelings  and  convictions,  long  entertained,  as  shown 
in  a  note  to  a  speech  of  Mr.  Randolph  on  the  occasion  of  the  death 
of  Mr.  David  Walker,  published  in  the  Abridgment  of  the  Debates, 
vol.  vi.,  page  566.  The  request  of  Mr.  Walker,  there  recorded,  and 
the  remarks  of  Mr.  Randolph  f  express  entirely  my  sentiments  and 
convictions.  Should  therefore  any  of  my  kind  friends  in  either 
House  make  it  necessary  to  do  so,  I  intrust  you  to  make  known  by 
means  of  this  note  my  express  wish  and  desire  that  the  event  remain 
unnoticed  in  Congress." 

*  Obituary  notice  from  the  Washington  Union.  A  large  num 
ber  of  these  notices,  cut  from  various  newspapers,  was  kindly  loaned 
me  by  the  late  Hon.  Richard  T.  Jacob.  I  have  used  them  sparingly 
for  some  of  the  scenes  during  his  last  days,  and  chiefly  in  regard  to 
details  of  his  funeral. 

t  Walker  had  expressed  a  wish,  with  which  the  House  complied, 
that  "  he  might  be  buried  without  pomp  or  parade,  attended  by  a 


LAST    YEARS  5*9 

On  Monday,  the  I2th,  when  his  actual  death  was 
known,  motions  were  carried  in  both  Houses  of  Congress 
for  an  adjournment  on  that  day  at  an  hour  to  enable  mem 
bers  to  attend  the  funeral  at  two  o'clock,  but  in  accord 
ance  with  his  expressed  wishes  no  other  notice  of  the 
event  was  taken.  The  day  was  a  very  inclement  one,  with 
rain  falling  in  torrents,  but  there  was  none  the  less  a  large 
attendance  at  the  ceremony,  including  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  heads  of  departments,  foreign  ministers, 
members  of  Congress,  and  others.  After  the  Episcopal 
service  was  read,  the  body  of  Benton  and  that  of  a  grand 
son,  who  had  by  a  curious  coincidence  died  in  his  house 
closely  at  the  same  time,  were  taken  to  the  railroad  station, 
followed  by  most  of  those  present,  and  then  sent  to  St. 
Louis. 

Immediately  upon  his  death,  there  was  in  his  home — 
and  probably  throughout  the  country — one  of  those  revul 
sions  of  feeling,  which  some  look  upon  merely  as  evidence 
of  the  fickleness  of  the  mob,  but  which  are  in  reality  based 
on  a  generous  feeling  and  the  desire  to  recognize  and  do 
honor  to  eminent  services  rendered  in  the  past,  in  spite  of 
recent  differences.  The  people  of  Missouri,  as  well  as 
Benton  himself,  had  taken  their  stand  as  to  the  public 
questions  of  the  day,  and  there  could  be  no  co-operation 
between  them ;  but,  now  that  he  was  dead  and  there  was 
therefore  no  longer  cause  for  difference,  the  overwhelm 
ing  mass  of  his  fellow-citizens  delighted  to  do  him  rev 
erence. 

A  meeting  of  the  citizens  of  St.  Louis,  corporations, 
societies,  the  courts,  adjourned  or  passed  resolutions  in 
his  honor,  and  an  enormous  mass  of  citizens  turned  out 


few  only  of  his  friends ;"  and  Randolph  placed  a  draft  for  one  thou 
sand  dollars  in  the  hands  of  a  friend  in  order  to  have  his  body  car 
ried  home  and  buried  at  his  own  expense,  without  parade  and 
pageantry- 


520       LIFE   OF   THOMAS    HART   BENTON 

on  the  occasion  of  the  funeral.  It  was  estimated  that 
twenty-five  thousand  people  viewed  the  remains,  as  they 
lay  in  state  in  the  Mercantile  Library  Hall,  and,  in  ac 
cordance  with  the  customs  on  such  occasions  in  that  day, 
the  Soldiers  of  1812,  the  judges  of  the  courts  and  mem 
bers  of  the  bar,  the  Mayor  and  City  Council,  some  semi- 
public  organizations,  and  a  host  of  societies,  formed  a 
part  of  the  funeral  procession.  All  this  was,  moreover, 
strictly  voluntary,  and  great  crowds  of  people  also 
watched  the  procession  go  by.  One  newspaper  writes  that 
"  the  entire  population  of  the  region  appears  to  have  gath 
ered  at  the  central  scene  and  along  the  line  of  the  proces 
sion.  The  streets  around  the  church  were  literally  packed 
with  human  beings,  while  for  squares  the  throngs  of  peo 
ple  and  carriages  were  nearly  impassable.  Roofs,  bal 
conies,  windows,  awnings,  and  trees  were  burdened  with 
spectators." 

The  cortege  was  estimated  to  be  two  miles  in  length, 
and  I  have  been  told  by  an  eye-witness  that  as  it  passed  by 
every  head  was  bared.  This  again  was  an  entirely  volun 
tary  tribute  and,  I  take  it,  by  no  means  usual  or  a  mere 
formality.  Services  were  held  in  the  Second  Presbyterian 
Church,  and  finally  the  procession  moved  on,  partly  by 
railroad,  to  Bellefontaine  Cemetery,  and  there  "  on  the 
sunset  side  of  the  Father  of  Floods,  the  towering  city  of 
St.  Louis  on  one  hand,  the  rolling  stream  of  the  Missouri 
on  the  other/'  were  placed  at  rest  the  mortal  remains  of 
one  who  was,  in  the  highest  and  best  sense,  one  of  our 
greatest  statesmen. 


INDEX 


Abolition,  modes  of  agitating  through  South,  332 
coupled  with  movement  for  disunion,  330 
petitions  for,  328,  329,  333,  334 

Benton  approves  House  rules  to  suppress  petitions  for,  333 
(See  "  Personal  Liberty  Laws,"  "  Sojourning  Laws") 
Adams,  John  Quincy,  on  reason  why  Benton  was  against  him  in 

1825,  146 

administration  of  patronage  by,  155 
Benton  had  no  power  during  presidency  of,  132 
fears  for  country  in  1828,  180 
on  obligation  of  United  States  to  force  States  to  pay  foreign 

debts,  173 

on  origin  of  Jackson's  dislike  of  bank,  193 
opinion  of  Senate  censure  of  Jackson,  241,  242 
on  difficulty  of  controlling  banks,  258 
changes  view  as  to  abolition  petitions,  328,  329 
absurd  abuse  of  Benton  and  others,  356 
feared  we  would  become  a  warlike  nation,  431 
Benton  makes  amends  to,  100 
Benton  calls  on  him,  355,  356 
Benton  seconds  usual  motion  on  death  of,  402 
Alamance,  battle  of,  14 

Allegheny  Mountains  separated  the  English  from  the  French,  25 
"  Americanus,"  Benton's  nom  de  plume  in  1829,  340,  341 
Ashburton  Treaty,  Benton's  opposition  to,  317-320 
Astor,  John  Jacob,  91,  277,  278 
Astoria,  91,  278 

Atocha,  negotiations  with,  during  Mexican  War,  367,  368 
Aurelian,  Benton  quotes  his  forbidding  salt  tax,  160 

Baily,  Francis,  21,  44 

Bank-notes.     (See  Currency) 

Bankruptcy,  Benton  opposed  to  voluntary,  448,  449 

(See  Bank  of  United  States,  Banks) 

Bank  of  United  States,  instinct  of  Democracy  against,  186,  187 
early  dislike  of,  in  Southwest,  184-192 
power  wielded  by,  200,  201 

521 


522  INDEX 

Bank  of  United  States,  struggles  against,  in  States,  189-192 
early  origin  of  Jackson's  opposition  to,  192,  193 
Clay's  earlier  views  on,  same  as  Jackson's,  185 
Jackson  intended  to  oppose,  in  inaugural,  195 
Benton's  early  moves  against,  197-202 
Jackson's  reference  to,  in  message  of  1829,  199,  203 
contest  over  recharter  of,  203-224 
Benton's  ideas  of  policy  in  attack  on,  205,  206 
Benton's  motion  as  to  liability  of  stockholders  of,  218 
"  results  of  the  veto"  of  bill  to  re-charter,  223,  224 
Benton's   charge   that   it   purposely   caused   distress   in 

1831-32,  224 

charged  with  prolonging  distress,  270 
Jackson  thought  it  insolvent  in  1833,  226 
abuses  by,  272-275 
loans  to  Congressmen  by,  273-275 
Benton  devotes  himself  to  its  destruction,  266 
Benton  ridicules  claim  that  it  is  not  a  political  engine, 

218 
Benton's  course  on  branch  bank  in  St.  Louis,  218-221 

(See  Branch  Bank  Orders) 

Banks,  reckless  financiering  of,  early  in  century,  187,  188 
Benton's  early  dislike  for,  88,  89,  126,  127,  191-193 
Benton  named  director  of  Bank  of  Missouri,  190 
amendments  of  general  laws  relating  to,  moved  by  Benton,  258, 

259 

extension  of  bankruptcy  to,  259 
liability  of  stockholders  of,  moved  by  Benton,  259 
John  Quincy  Adams  on  difficulty  of  controlling,  258 
dividends  paid  by,  during  suspension,  258 
(See  Currency) 
Barton,  Joshua,  108 
Benton,  Jesse,  the  elder,  13-20 

consumption's  ravages  in  his  family,  49 
Mrs.,  17-20 

the  younger,  73-82,  142 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  birth  and  early  years,  16 
his  mother,  17-20 
named  after  mother's  uncle,  15 
early  recollection,  19 
education,  19 

early  influences,  39,  43-54,  64-66 
as  boy  reads  "  English  State  Trials,"  49,  50 


INDEX  523 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  recollection  of  "  shooting-matches,"  47 
charge  of  theft,  53,  54 
early  enthusiasm  for  France,  65 
removal  to  Tennessee,  20 
life  at  West  Harpeth,  45 
hears  of  closure  of  New  Orleans  in  1802,  48 
gives  up  farming,  48 
studies  law,  50,  51 
lawyer  in  Tennessee,  52 
threatened  with  consumption,  64 
articles  of,  on  Tennessee  law  system,  55,  56 
in  Tennessee  Senate,  56-60 
writes  Jackson's  address  to  soldiers,  68,  69 
commands  regiment  in  Natchez  expedition,  69 
commissioned  lieutenant-colonel,  80 
thought  himself  rich  in  St.  Louis,  103,  190 
on  election  to  Senate,  gives  up  law  practice,  89 
on  division  of  western  territory  into  States,  90,  91 
studies  Spanish  during  Missouri  struggle,  126 
marriage  of,  127-129 
on  presidential  election  of  1824-25,  131 
dirks  and  pistols  needed  in  Congress  if  Jackson  is  elected, 

146,  222,  223 

why  he  came  out  for  Jackson  in  1825,  146 
encounter  of,  with  Clay  during  Veto  Session,  221-223 
ideas  of,  as  to  party  policy  in  attack  on  bank,  205,  206 
charged  with  gross  partisanship,  207 
attacks  bank  for  alarming  Senator's  family  by  service  of  a 

writ,  207 

on  evils  of  Tariff  Act  of  1828,  251,  252 
thought  the  tariff  very  unjust  to  the  South,  334 
expected  to  be  assassinated  on  night  of  expunging,  239,  240 
plan  to  put  at  head  of  army,  363-367 
clash  of,  with  McDufne  over  Texas  Treaty,  349-351 
letter  of,  on  Texas,  346 
letter  of,  to  people  of  California,  378,  379 
writes  as  "  Sir  John  Oldcastle,"  55,  56 

writes  on  Texas  as  "  Americanus"  and  "  La  Salle,"  340,  341 
stops  payment  of  salary  in  treasury-notes,  261 
opposes  schemes  to  distribute  books,  etc.,  468-470 
rising  opposition  to,  in  Missouri,  353~357 
belief  of,  as  to  origin  of  opposition,  353-355,  407 


524  INDEX 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  story  of  his  being  deranged  by  explosion  on 

"  Princeton,"  354 

elected  to  House  of  Representatives,  423-425 
was  to  have  defended  Taylor's  intended  Union  message,  390 
defeated  for  re-election  to  House,  433,  434 
appeal  campaign  of,  411-414 
political  contests  of  his  later  years,  414,  415 
campaign  of,  for  governor  of  Missouri,  507-509 
speech  of,  against  United  States  Bank  in  1831,  201,  202 
speech  of,  against  branch  bank  orders,  207-214 
speech  of,  on  giving  notice  of  expunging  resolution,  230- 

232 

speech  of,  on  land  laws,  168-170 
speech  of,  on  Oregon,  303-312 
on  how  West  would  have  seized  New  Orleans,  31 
ridicules  Webster's  claims  for  Nathan  Dane,  182 
ridicules  Clay's  "  five  gaping  wounds,"  389 
"  Drs.  Townsend's  Sarsaparilla,"  389,  390 
compares  slavery  agitation  to  curse  of  frogs,  370,  371 
story  of  "  La  Belle  Creole,"  266,  267 
quotes  Aurelian's  forbidding  of  salt  tax,  160 
would  not  make  Antony  master  of  Rome,  260,  261 
answers  Calhoun  by  a  story,  463 

"There  is  the  East;    there  is  the  road  to  India,"  421,  422 
called  "  Gold  Humbug"  and  "  Old  Bullion,"  262 
offices  offered  to,  257,  498,  499 
immense  power  held  by,  in  Missouri,  404-408 
methods  of,  with  his  constituents,  404-407 
thirst  of,  for  knowledge,  442-445 
geographical  knowledge  of,  447,  448 
knowledge  of  facts,  445 
a  bitter  hater,  493,  494 
domineering  disposition  of,  490-492 
manner  of,  in  anger,  486-490 
long  wrangle  of,  with  William  C.  Rives,  486 
violence  of,  to  opponents,  424 
gross  personalities  of,  453~457 
forced  enemies  to  conspire  against  him,  408,  409 
relations  of,  with  colleagues,  492,  493 
as  a  speaker  in  Senate,  458-465 
manners  of,  in  Senate,  457-459 
on  right  of  speech  in  Senate,  478 
opposed  "pairing  off,"  479 


INDEX  525 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  on  termination  of  Congress,  432,  479,  480 
beliefs  of,  as  to  legislation,  472-475 
opinion  of,  on  bills  that  pass  unanimously,  477,  478 
often  opposed  measures  "  sure  to  pass,"  465,  466 
opposed  stale  claims,  475,  476 
disliked  office-seeking,  471,  472 

speaks  to  Polk  as  to  appointment  for  son-in-law,  381 
despised  political  platforms,  471 
disliked  caucuses,  471 
how  lobbyists  were  hated  by,  470,  471 
political  morality  of,  466-468 
duels  of,  with  Clay  avoided  with  difficulty,  221 
near  a  duel  with  Butler,  377,  378 
his  distrust  of  New  England,  39 

thought  the  North  quite  just  at  times  to  the  South,  334 
would  not  always  rigidly  adhere  to  his  beliefs  on  trifles,  250, 

251 

interest  of,  in  plans  for  electro-magnetic  traction,  418,  419 
on  uniformity  of  laws  in  States,  62 
wants  cordon  of  friendly  republics,  99 
calculates  "  beatable  waters"  of  Mississippi  Valley,  96,  97 
Gulf  of  Mexico  "  mare  nostrum"  499 
on  monopolies,  484 
on  arbitration,  481 
on  our  military  system,  482,  483 
opposed  to  voluntary  bankruptcy,  448,  449 
thought  federal  government  could  not  make  money,  473,  474 
strict  constructionist  of  Constitution,  480,  481 
devotion  of,  to  Union,  499-504 

would  not  seek  for  disunion  more  than  for  divorce,  335 
stories  of  egotism  of,  449~453 
makes  up  quarrels,  494-496 
boldness  of,  60,  484-487 
his  substitute  for  clearing  galleries,  490,  491 
could  not  stand  imposition,  441 
his  literary  work  of  latter  years,  510-515 
speech  of,  on  his  afflictions,  516 
children  of,  516,  517 
personal  appearance  of,  436,  437 
home  life  of,  435,  436,  440 
residences  of,  438 
habits  of,  437,  438,  44°,  44* 
social  qualities  of,  439 


526  INDEX 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  health  of,  441,  442 

flecks  of  blood  from  throat  of,  64 

memory  of,  444,  446,  447 

gentleness  of,  to  women,  439,  440 

religion  of,  441 

opposes  notice  of  his  death  in  Congress,  518 

death  of,  517 

funeral  of,  519,  520 

(Sec  Atocha ;  Chicago  Canal ;  Coinage ;  Constitution  ; 
Currency;  Executive  Patronage;  Jackson-Napton  Reso 
lutions  ;  Mexico ;  Mississippi  River ;  New  England ; 
Public  Improvements;  Reciprocity;  St.  Louis  Enquirer; 
Shooting-matches ;  Specie ;  Treasury  Notes ;  Union ; 
Woolly  Horse 

Mrs.,  131,  435,  436,  515 
Benton-town,  45 

"  Beyond  the  mountains,"  settlement  of  region,  23 
Biddle,  Nicholas,  on  power  of  United  States  Bank,  200,  201 

calls  on  Van  Buren  in  panic  of  1837,  269,  270 
Binney,  Horace,  opinion  of,  on  branch  bank  orders,  214-216 

partisan  speech  of,  269 
"  Books,  Battle  of  the,"  469,  470 
Boone,  Daniel,  16,  17,  25 

Benton  nominated  for  Senate  by  son  of,  119 

Bradbury,  Senator  James  W.,  on  Benton's  manner  in  Senate,  459 
Branch  bank  orders,  209-217 
Buchanan,  James.  134,  290,  291,  294,  517 

writes  articles  against  Benton,  300-302 

Polk  nearly  quarrels  with,  313 

Buenaventura,  supposed  river  leading  to  San  Francisco,  09 
Burke,  Edmund,  166,  167 
Burr,  Aaron,  60-63 

Calhoun,  John  C,  toast  of,  at  Jefferson  Birthday  Dinner,  248 
early  desire  of,  to  admit  Texas,  343 
chief  agitator  of  slavery  about  1835,  334,  335 
teuton's  answer  to  his  "fire-brand"  resolutions,  371 
Benton  atlaoks.  as  author  of  Mexican  War.  360 
teuton's  answer  to,  on  disunion.  376,  377 
IVnton  said  he  would  have  hanged  in  1828,  508 
Benton's  hatred  of.  496,  497 

Cain  petition,  333 

Carroll,  William,  73 


INDEX  527 

Carson,  Kit,  443 

Cession  to  Florida  to  drain  Everglades  supported  by  Benton,  179 

to  States  of  land  within  their  borders,  179 
Change  of  ratio.     (See  Coinage) 
Chicago  Canal,  Benton  early  favors,  96,  97,  149 
Chouteau,  Auguste,  83,  85,  120 
Clark,  General  George  Rogers,  26 

General  William,  88,  102 
Clay,  Henry,  how  connected  with  the  Bentons,  16 

did  not  induce  bank  to  apply  for  recharter,  204 
Benton's  encounter  with,  during  "  Veto  Session,"  221-223 
duels  of,  with  Benton  avoided  with  difficulty,  221 
loan  to,  by  United  States  Bank,  274 
convinced  by  Benton,  465 
Clayton,  Thomas,  moves  committee  to  investigate  bank,  206 

Compromise  Bill,  371-377 
Code  of  Honor,  consistency  of  the,  397 
Coffee,  General  John,  67,  69,  76-78 

Coinage,  Benton's  change  of  ratio  of  gold  and  silver,  264 
Columbia  River,  279,  280,  288,  293 

(See  Oregon) 
Compromise  measures  of  1850,  387-392 

Tariff  of  1833,  249,  250 
Congress.     (See  Senate) 

Constitution,  extension  of,  to  territories  ridiculed  by  Benton,  428, 
429 

Benton  thought,  did  not  authorize  holding  subject  provinces,  431 

Benton  a  strict  constructionist  of,  480,  481 

Conventions,  National  Presidential,  Benton  never  attended,  471 
"  Cravat  Story,"  53,  54 

Cuba,  Benton  thought,  would  become  a  part  of  us,  101 
Cumberland  Road,  Benton  favored  building  of,  149 

Benton  votes  against  Gate  Bill,  147,  148 
Currency,  Benton  opposed  small  notes,  261,  262 

speech  on  finances  jointly  with  Calhoun  and  Wright,  264,  265 

Benton's  refusals  to  accept  notes  in  change  for  gold,  263 
Gushing,  Caleb,  497,  511,  512 

Dane,  Nathan,  182 

Darby,  John  R,  84,  87 

Deposit.     (See  Distribution) 

Deposits.     (See  Removal  of  the  Deposits) 

Dickerson,  Mahlon,  originated  distribution  schemes,  171 


528  INDEX 

Distribution  among  the  States,  171-174 

called  by  Benton  "  curse  of  frogs,"  174 

of  books,  etc.,  to  members  of  Congress  Benton  opposes,  468-470 
Dred  Scott  case,  510-512 

Elections.   Presidential,  Benton's  efforts  to  amend  method  of  con 
ducting,  151,  152 

(See  Conventions,  National  Presidential) 
England,  Benton's  distrust  of,  92,  93 

Executive  patronage,  Benton's  views  on,  and  bills  to  reduce,  254,  255 
Expunging  resolution,  229-245 

Benton  expected  assassination  at  passage  of,  239,  240 

Fishing  rebates.     (See  Salt  Tax) 
Florida.     (See  Spanish  Treaty  of  1819) 

Armed  Occupation  Law,  176,  177 
Floyd,  Dr.  John,  285,  286 
Foote,  Henry  S.,  attacks  Benton's  conduct  as  to  Mexican  Treaty,  379 

Benton's  encounter  with,  392-401 

Benton  stops  his  scheme  to  purchase  books,  469,  470 
Foot's  resolution,  Benton's  part  in  debate  on,  180-182 
Forney,  John  W.,  302 

Forsyth,  John,  loan  to,  by  United  States  Bank,  273,  274 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  view  of,  as  to  Mississippi  River,  31,  32 

Tennessee,  removal  of  Benton  family  to  neighborhood  of,  20 
Fremont,  Jessie  Benton,  account  of  her  father's  childhood,  17,  19 
John  C,  284 

Benton  opposed  to,  for  presidency,  509 

French  Spoliation  Claims,  Benton  always  opposed  to,  475,  476 
"  Frogs,  Curse  of,"  distribution  compared  to,  by  Benton,  174 

slavery  agitation  compared  to,  370,  371 

Gantt,  Honorable  Thomas  T.,  account  of  Benton-Lucas  duels  by, 

104,  113,  H4,  n6 
Gardoqui,  28,  32,  33,  34 
Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  327 

thought  negroes  would  dominate  the  South,  331 
Geyer,  Henry  S.,  elected  to  succeed  Benton,  403,  414 
"  Gold  Humbug,"  nickname  for  Benton,  262 
Gooch,  Ann.     (See  Benton,  Mrs.  Jesse) 
"  Granny  White,"  58,  59,  164 
Greenhow  R.,  History  of  Oregon  by,  281 


INDEX  529 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  Benton's  admiration  of,  137 

James  A.,  195 

Hart,  Colonel  Thomas,  15,  17 
Hayne,  Robert  Y.,  close  friend  of  Benton,  141 
Hayne- Webster  debate,  Benton's  share  in,  180-182 
Haywood,  W.  H.,  Jr.,  300 

Homestead  advocated  by  Benton  as  "  donations,"  165 
Houston,  Sam,  corporal  in  Benton's  regiment,  69 

devotion  to  Union  of,  500 
Hudson's  Bay  Company,  93,  279,  293,  295,  315 

Imperialism,  John  Quincy  Adams  feared  approach  of,  431 
Incendiary  publications,  Benton  votes  against  bill  to  suppress,  336, 

337 

(See  Abolition) 

India,  The  American  road  to,  95,  96 
Jefferson's  plan  to  reach,  95,  96 

"  India,  There  is  the  East;   there  is  the  road  to,"  421,  422 
Indian  Factory  System,  Benton  secures  repeal  of,  150 
Ingham,    Samuel   D.,  proves  Jackson's   early  wish   to   end   United 
States  Bank,  195,  196 

Jackson,  Andrew,  17,  51,  60-62,  66-72 

Benton's  early  friendship  for,  17,  51-53 

Benton  aids,  to  military  command,  66-68 

question  of  rank  with  General  Wilkinson,  75,  80 

brings  army  home  from  Natchez,  70-72 

Benton  saves,  from  ruin,  71,  72 

Benton's  quarrel  with,  73-82 

Benton  criticises,  in  1821,  130 

Benton's  alleged  slur  upon,  as  to  dirks  and  pistols,  146,  222, 

223 

Benton's  reconciliation  with,  141-143 
Benton  not  at  first  for  election  of,  in  1825,  143 
Benton  writes  what  his  administration  will  do,  183 
possible  coolness  with  Benton,  254,  258 
toast  of,  that  Union  must  be  preserved,  248 
why  he  made  many  removals  from  office,  257 
intended  to  oppose  bank  in  inaugural,  195 
reference  of,  to  bank  in  first  message,  199,  203 
current  story  why  he  opposed  United  States  Bank,  194-197 
Benton  on  his  conduct  during  Panic  Session,  228,  229 
Benton  wants  his  aid  for  speech  in  defence  in  1837,  192 
34 


530  INDEX 

Jackson,  Mrs.  Andrew,  53 

Claiborne,  456 
Jackson-Napton  resolutions,  409,  410 

Benton's  appeal  from,  411-414 
Jay,  John,  28,  32,  33,  34,  35 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  plan  of,  for  communication  between  East  and 

West,  28 

plan  of,   to   reach   East   Indies,  95,   96 
Benton's  visit  to,  and  account  of,  153 
Birthday  Dinner  in  1830,  247,  248 

Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  Benton's  opposition  to,  425-430 
Keyes,  E.  D.,  visit  of,  to  Benton,  450 
King  Rufus,  I34~i37 

on  real  motives  for  Missouri  struggle,  123 

reproves  Benton  for  heated  manner,  136 
King's  Mountain,  battle  of,  25,  26 

Laclede,  Pierre,  83 

Land  laws,  Benton's  course  as  to,  in  Tennessee  Senate,  57-60 

origin  of  Benton's  views  on,  164,  165 

Benton's  efforts  to  modify,  162-182 

Speech  on,  168-170 

(See  Florida  Armed  Occupation  Law) 

La  Salle,  plan  of,  to  reach  East  Indies  by  going  west,  95,  96 
"  La  Salle,"  Benton's  nom  de  plume  in  1829,  340,  341 
Lawless,  Luke  E.,  Benton's  second  in  Lucas  duels,  105 
Lawrence,  Abbott,  partisan  speech  of,  269 
Lee,  Henry,  255 

Lieutenant-General  Bill,  363-365 
Linn,  Dr.  Lewis  R,  285,  286 
Louisiana,  purchase  of,  by  Jefferson,  36 
Lucas,  Charles,  Benton's  duels  with,  104-116 

John  B.  C.,  account  of  Benton-Lucas  duels  by,  104,  105,  in,  113 

candidate  for  Senate  against  Benton,  119,  120 

grossly  insults  Benton,  114 

McDowell,  Elizabeth,  Benton's  long  courtship  of,  and  marriage  to, 

101,  127-129 

(See  Benton,  Mrs.  Thomas  Hart) 

McDuffie,  George,  position  of,  on  branch  bank  orders,  217 
large  loan  to,  by  United  States  Bank,  274 
Benton's  clash  with,  over  Texas  Treaty,  349-351 


INDEX  531 

McLane,  Robert,  294 

Macon,  Nathaniel,  135,  I37~i39 

influence  of,  on  Benton,  140,  156,  160 

Marbois,  Barbe,  37,  38 

Mason,  George,  163 

Maury,  Mrs.  Matthew,  on  Benton's  manner  in  Senate,  449 

Mexican  Treaty,  effort  to  nullify  the,  by  protocol,  378,  379 
War,  Benton  opposed  to,  359-361 

Benton's  advice  as  to  conduct  of,  361-364 
negotiations  for  peace  with  Atocha,  367,  368 
plan  to  put  Benton  in  supreme  command,  363-367 
selection  of  Scott  to  command,  363 

Mexico,  Benton  early  carries  law  for  road  to,  from  Missouri,  152, 

153 

efforts  to  secure  territory  from,  288 

Mississippi  River  vital  to  people  of  Southwest,  28,  37,  38 
Franklin's  view  as  to,  31,  32 
right  to  navigate,  29 
effort  to  give  up,  temporarily,  33 
right  to  navigate,  under  treaty  of  San  Lorenzo,  36 
Benton  imprecates  woe  on  surrender  of  a  drop  of  its  waters, 

98 

early  steamboats  on,  102,  103 

Benton's  plan  to  connect  with  Great  Lakes,  96,  97 
Benton  favors  federal  improvement  of,  150 
Missouri,  steps  of,  for  admission  to  Union,  117-122 
overwhelmingly  Democratic  in  Benton's  day,  404 
Resolutions  of  General  Assembly  of,  in  regard  to  Texas,  351,  352 
{See  Jackson-Napton  Resolutions) 
question,  called  "  misery"  question,  118 

real  nature  of,  122-125 
Morales,  Intendant,  stops  deposit  at  New  Orleans,  37 

Natchez  Expedition,  67-71 

New  England,  dislike  of  Southwest  for,  26,  33,  170,  180,  181 

Benton's  early  distrust  of,  39,  100,  101 

Benton  closer  to,  late  in  life,  504,  505 
Nootka  Convention,  276,  277 
North  Carolina,  13,  41 
Northwest  Coast.     (See  Oregon) 
Nullification,  246-249 

due  to  Tariff  Act  of  1828,  in  Benton's  opinion,  250,  251 
part  taken  by  Benton  on,  248,  249 


532  INDEX 

"  Old  Bullion,"  nickname  for  Benton,  262 

"  Oldcastle,  Sir  John,"  Benton's  early  nom  de  plume,  55,  56 

Omnibus  Bill,  388-391 

Oregon,  discovery  and  early  settlement  of,  90,  91,  276-279 

Benton's  early  articles  on,  92-96 

The  Convention  of  1818,  91-93 

Benton's  early  efforts  for,  in  Senate,  285-287 

Fremont  exploring  expedition  to,  284 

negotiations  for  boundary  of,  282,  287,  288,  290,  291 

Benton  and  others  sounded  on  compromise  as  to,  288 

line  of  49°,  280-284 

Benton  advocates  line  of  49°  in  1828  and  1841,  286,  287 

line  of  54°  40',  origin  of,  279,  283,  289 
Benton  discusses,  311 

how  treaty  as  to,  was  brought  about,  294-316 

Benton's  speeches  on,  in  1846,  298-300,  303,  305-312 

Pacific  Railroad.     {See  Railroads) 

Convention,  419-422 
Page,  Dr.  Charles  G.,  418 
Pakenham,  Sir  Richard,  290,  291,  293,  294 
Panama  Congress,  154,  155 

Panic  of  1837,  Van  Buren  sneers  at  Benton's  prophecy  of,  268 
"  Panic  Session,"  227-241 
Paris,  Treaty  of,  in  1763,  29,  30 
Patronage.     (See  Executive  Patronage) 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  294 
"  Personal  Liberty  Laws,"  335 
Pierce,  Franklin,  £11,  512 

Pinckney,  Thomas,  negotiates  treaty  of  San  Lorenzo,  35,  36 
Pinkney,  William,  134,  140 
Polk,  James  K.,  interviews  of,  with  Benton  about  Mexico,  359-367 

course  of,  as  to  Oregon,  289,  291 

concerned  in  articles  against  Benton,  300-302 

he  and  Buchanan  nearly  quarrel,  313 

breach  of,  with  Benton,  379-382 
Popular  Sovereignty,  373,  427,  428 

Presidency,  Benton's  course  concerning,  in  1824-25,  143-146 
Benton  named  for,  497,  498 
(See  Elections,  Presidential) 
Preston,  James  P.,  Benton's  friendship  with,  88,  101 

Benton's  early  letters  to,  101-103,  128-132 
Protection,  Benton  not  a  believer  in,  250 


INDEX  533 

Protection,  bargains  made  to  secure,  252,  253 

(See  Tariff) 
Public  improvements,  Benton's  views  as  to,  147-150 

Quincy,  Josiah,  ravings  of,  against  the  West,  40 

Railroad,  transcontinental,  Benton's  efforts  to  secure,  418-422 

Railroads,  Benton  at  first  opposed  to,  415-418 

Randolph,  John,  134,  140,  327 

Rebates,  Fishing.     (See  Salt  Tax) 

Reciprocity  proposed  by  Benton  in  1830  and  1840,  156,  157,  253,  254 

"  Regulators"  in  North  Carolina,  14 

Removal  of  the  deposits,  225-227 

Rio  Grande  del  Norte,  whether  rightful  boundary  of  Texas,  99 

Rives,  William  C,  Benton's  long  dispute  with,  486 

Robertson,  James,  25,  94 

Russell,  Lord  John,  289 

St.  Ildephonso,  secret  treaty  of,  36 

St.  Louis,  settlement  and  growth  of,  83—87,  90 

Benton's  removal  to,  80-82,  87,  103 

control  of,  by  Americans,  86,  87 

Benton's  confidence  in  future  of,  103 

Benton  member  of  school  board  of,  88 

Benton's  success  in,  as  lawyer,  89 
St.  Louis  Enquirer,  Benton  part  owner  and  editor  of,  88,  89 

Benton's  articles  on  Convention  of  1818  and  Florida  Treaty 

in,  92,  93,  99,  100 

Salt  tax,  Benton's  struggle  to  repeal,  156-161 
San  Jacinto,  battle  of,  343 

Scotch-Irish  settle  the  region  beyond  the  mountains,  23 
Scott,  John,  votes  for  Adams  in  1825,  143,  144 

Winfield,  selection  of,  to  command  in  Mexican  War,  363 
Senate,  Benton's  first  election  to,  119-121 

on  election  to,  Benton  gives  up  law  practice,  89 

Benton's  entrance  into,  133 

account  of,  in  1821,  133-141 

Benton's  early  position  in,  131 

Benton's  committee  service  in,  146,  147 

Benton's  early  services  in,  146-148 

Benton's  later  elections  to,  224,  353,  354,  357 

Benton's  length  of  service  in,  505 

when  Benton  contended  it  ends,  432,  479,  480 


534  INDEX 

Sevier,  John,  25,  41,  77 

Shooting-matches,  Benton's  account  of,  47 

Slavery,  law  for  trial  of  slaves  advocated  by  Benton,  56,  57 

Benton  advocates,  for  Missouri  in  1820,  119 

Southern  view  of,  322-325 

early  efforts  at  emancipation,  325-328 

Benton's  early  views  as  to,  125,  324,  325 

Benton  began  to  fear  question  about  1820,  329  N 

Benton's  views  as  to,  in  1830  and  later,  331-338 

Benton  always  opposed  to  agitation  of,  370-372 

struggle  over,  after  Mexican  War,  372-379 

(See  Calhoun,  John  C.) 
"  Sojourning  Laws,"  335 

"  Solitary  and  alone,"  origin  of  phrase,  230,  231 
Southern  meetings  of  1848-49,  382,  383 
Southwest,  the  early,  28-37,  65,  66 
Spanish  Treaty  of  1819,  Benton  opposes,  97-100 

why  it  yielded  so  much  to  Spain,  100 
Specie,  Benton  wanted,  largely  used  as  currency,  260 

Circular,  Benton  wrote  the,  256,  257 
Stanford,  Richard,  19 
States,  how   Benton  thought   western  territory   should  be   divided 

90,  91 
Sub-Treasury,  265,  266 

Tariff,  Benton's  general  course  on  the,  250-253 

Taylor,  John,  of  Caroline,  139,  140 
Zachary,  enters  on  presidency,  384 

preparing  Union  message  at  time  of  death,  300 

Tennessee,  settlement  of,  21-41 

Texas,  Benton's  early  views  as  to,  98-101,  339-342 
Benton's  articles  in  1829  on,  340,  341 
Calhoun's  early  desire  to  admit,  343 
Benton's  views  as  to  true  boundary  of,  339-342 
why  Florida  Treaty  gave  up,  339,  340 
efforts  to  secure  part  of,  from  Mexico,  342,  359 
plans  to  annex,  Benton's  opposition  to,  343-353 
Benton's  public  letter  on,  346 
Benton  votes  for  joint  resolution  to  annex,  358 

Treasury  notes,  Benton's  dislike  of,^  261 

Benton  stops  payment  of  salaries  in,  261 

Tyler,  John,  Benton  attacks  his  report  on  branch  bank  in  St.  Louis, 
218-221 


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